Monitor goes dead upon Linux Startup
 

This morning was my introduction to LINUX, I attempted to install Red Hat 9 and everything went fine. Took out the disk and the comp restarted fine, then the moniter goes dead. The led on the monitor flashes, as if there is no signal at all.

I spent no less than 6 hours reading "Red Hat Linux 9 Professional Secrets" by Naba Barkakati. I understood most of what I found, but there were no suggestions on how to overcome my probem.

I've also spent a couple hours searching this board and have found similar threads. But the answers are quite hard for me to understand since I've only begun working with Linux this morning.

I'm hoping someone can help me. I can't imagine spending another 6 hours on this tomorrow, but I'm stuck and do not know what to do.

Thanks in advance!



1. I have to use linux text mode when starting installation, nothing will appear in graphic.

2. I go through the prompts, no problem. I choose Autopartition and pretty must hit "ok" for everything else when I'm not sure what it means.

3. My video card does not show up in the list, the default chosen by the system is VESA Generic. The computer's video card is: ASUS V9520VIDEO SUITE/2DTV/N/128M1A.

4. The system cannot identify the moniter either, lists it as unknown. The moniter is an LCD Samsung Syncmaster 15ON

Is the problem with the video card, or the monitor? If it is the video card, how do I get my systrem to recognize it when it is not in the given list and when VESA Generic does not work?

I've reinstalled at least 7 times, trying something different each time. No luck.

Thanks!

Because it doesn't recognize the monitor, it may be choosing a refresh that is out of range. At the monitor selection screen at installation time, try manually specifying the horizontal and vertical refresh rates.

If all that goes well, surf over to the nVidia web site and download the latest Linux drivers.

Good Luck
Baldrick

How is the monitor connected to the base unit?

I mention this because I've tried to set linux up for some friends and their flat screen monitor is connected via a DVI lead and not a CRT lead.
I've yet to find the distro that can cope with this "out of the box". (For that matter I've yet to find a solution to this).

I assume that you are booting directly into a graphic login?


Do you see the boot messages as they go by, or does it go black right away?

If you let it load up all the way, and then hit control+alt+f2 to switch to a text only console, does that display?

are you using dvi, or the 25 pin video connector?

are there any other video devices connected to the card?


If you can get into a text consle with the control+alt+f2, (after paitently waiting for it to boot) then you know that the issue is with the way you have X configured.


Try hookign it up to another monitor to see if the same thing happens, and google around for a video driver (dont suppose the manufacture was nice enough to provide one)

you shoudnt really need a special driver for the monitor, just the card, but the refresh rates and resolution in your xfree86 config file need to be correct.




If you get into cli, change your runlevel to 3 by editing /etc/initab so you can get it to boot reliably and see what is going on. then dig into finding the X config tool to reconfigure it to work. redhat-config-xfree86 might work, although Ive never used it. There was one I alwasys used in rh but for the life of me i cant remember.....


Let us know what you come up with and we can dig some more.