hey all i'm a 3-week old newbie who is just getting into the swing of things but having some trouble ever since i took my computer tower home for college break... seems to be that the spare monitor my dad had sitting around is old enough that it can't load up to the linux login screen (or XP, i tried booting it for the first time since i switched over) without getting all scrambled, as in the resolution is off. is there any way i can stop the boot process or change the resolution so i can keep learning over break?

When you mean login screen, you mean the graphical login right, where X is already started?

First, lets get that puppy into runlevel 3 by default, at the boot prompt for lilo or grub, get a command line and type: linux single.

This will boot the machine into single user mode, no networking is started, very barebones. Use your favorite command line editor to change the default runlevel in /etc/inittab to 3, it should currently be at 5. If you haven't got a favorite command line editor, I recommend pico; then later learn vi imediately, or emacs... but yeah vi really. It should be as easy as:

pico /etc/inittab

Be careful, you're root at this point, if you think you bunged up the file, quit without saving (all the command are at the bottom of the screen.)

With that sorted:

init 3

Which is where you'll be the next time you boot the machine, all the multiuser goop is started, you should be able to ping yahoo, blah blah blah.

Then copy your XF86Config file, located in /etc/X11 and stick it somewhere safe for when you get back to school and your old monitor. Now, create a new XF86Config file. The easiest way is to do this is:

/usr/X11/bin/XFree86 -configure

Which will create a test file in /root and will spit to the screen the instructions on how to test it. If that works, rename the file XF86Config and stick it in /etc/X11. If that doesn't work, look up the horizontal and vertical info on the monitor on the web (or if you're lucky on the back of the monitor, or if your pop is a packrat like me, in the manual he has stored in the closet), and try to build a file with the command line tool:

/usr/X11/bin/xf86config

When you're done: startx

If both of those hack... then post back.

Luck,

Finegan

well, i type linux single in the command line of the (grub) boot loader and get nothing. also, i use nano instead of pico... i'm assuming this won't be a problem...

hello. uhh, i also have the same problem. i've only tried out my redhat 7.2 today, and everything works fine, the black and white startup stuff, but when it reaches the blue it's all screwed up. it just flickers like an old TV. but my monitor isn't old like bandofmercy's. well it's 4 years old, i guess that's old by computer years but it worked fine in Win 98, is working fine right now in XP, and it worked fine while starting up redhat 7.2, but flickers like mad when it gets to the sky blue screen. also, there's this freaky sound that comes out when it reaches that flickering stage. what should i do?

you have a different problem than me... for you i'm guessing that during installation you just set up the monitor wrong... me not knowing hardly anything about linux would suggest that you re-install and try to run some kind of test screen... i can't remember if you had that option. there are other ways to do this without a clean install which would probalby be simliar, if not the same to my problem, but we'll have to wait for someone to actually answer that... on a side note, if you want to just get to know the terminal, which i would highly recommend in the mean time (assuming you're new) you can press ctrl+alt+f1 to get out of the x window server and mess around in a command-line, dos-like environment. you'll have to learn to love it and most likely you will, so this is a better time than ever to start.

Sounds like you've got the refresh rates messed up. I would quickly do as bandofmercy suggested and switch to the command line mode by pressing ctrl-alt-F2 and from there you should be able to run Xconfigurator to setup and reconfigure X. I would definitely check out your monitor specs on what is the recommended settings or you can destroy your monitor with the wrong settings. That high pitch noise is not a good sign.

hi, thanks for your advice. i did the xf thing you said and changed the settings and all, afterwards it saved itself, right? then afterwards it said to view the xf86 file b4 starting up but i don't know how to view the file. anyhow i typed view xf86 and these little dashes came out at the left of the screen. when i got back to the normal black and white screen, i typed "startx" and it said server error or something. it does that every time. i've tried it more than ten times.
i'd reboot, then do the xf86 thing, then type startx after, and it'll say error. if after i reboot and don't do the xf86 thing, the screen still flickers. ....

oh hey, it works now. the reason why the x settings i changed didn't work b4 was cause i wasn't logged in as "root". yez, i'm an idiot. well my linux computer is now two days old.
now all i gotta do is figure out how to get online. and stop my stupid mouse from freezing every few seconds.
oooh, and the games are fun. haha..
thanks trickykid and bandofmercy.
=)