Geforce 8400 graphics card issue | can't access tty ??

Simon Bridge · 07-03-2007, 08:11 AM

(1) you edited it in a terminal using nano? This suggests that your terminal - or, at least, the non gui one, has root. You may just have to make a user via the commandline... reboot to safe mode.

(2) OK... gotcha.

(3) That depends

(4) Thing is, part of the installation involves creating a user.

"pmd" = print working directory ... I wanted to know what user you were logged in as and with what privileges. Try:

cd ~
pwd

include the prompt

ls /home
... should be interesting

The cli to make a user is

useradd

(see the man page for its use)

Once you can login properly you can use the restricted driver manager to configure your graphics, connect to the web, etc.

misstajah · 07-03-2007, 11:07 AM

The first directory I'm in when in safe mode is /root.
Yes, a console is on when booted on recovery mode.

I've tried to add a user like this:

# useradd -p myPassword myUsername // suppose my user and pass are like this xD

When I go to normal mode, I try to login and nothing

exvor · 07-03-2007, 05:39 PM

You wont get the graphics board working unless nvidia has a linux driver for it. thus 3d will not work unless a driver for it is written by the hardware vendor. There is no magic that will make it work.

The problems will be many for you I am afraid as with all my experiences with Linux and laptops that are built around windows. Don't worry tho things will catch up for you. I installed a distro of mepis a few month's ago and almost nothing worked for me on my laptop but there current one works out of the box with everything on my laptop working save the card reader.

misstajah · 07-03-2007, 06:08 PM

yea i know that

but i need to configure the network so as to download the drivers from nvidia.com and install them, and only then i can edit the xorg.conf file again...

but first of it i need to get a way to add a user with every privilege (root aparently doesn't have 'em here) to configure wireless and LAN. like i said before, the command i entered won't help much... unless i've forgotten something, which is more likely xD

Simon Bridge · 07-03-2007, 09:10 PM

The nvidia driver comes in the feisty CD... once you have a normal account there is a tool to configure the driver.

Show me the result of

ls /home

(presumably done in rescue mode)

You can also

cat /etc/passwd

... and look for your new user account.

misstajah · 07-04-2007, 05:01 AM

I have checked the /etc/passwd and my account is there. But it won't login... the system says I have a wrong user/password. I even tried adding a user with no password and it still won't do...

And by the way, i don't see the drivers on the CD, i'm searching for "nvidia" on windows. Is this the right CD? Because honestly I don't know if 7.04 is the "feisty" u always recall... oops :P

Simon Bridge · 07-04-2007, 05:47 AM

passwords are case sensitive... create a user with password 1234.
You could also open /etc/shadow and remove everything between the first two colons after a username. Then try logging in as that user.

However... I am thinking you will have to reinstall. Keep a log of everything (yes... by hand) as you go. The installer is supposed to get you to create a user, as well as assign a name for the host etc.

Ubuntu releases are numbered after the release date (7.04 = April 2007). Since the actual release date may not be as planned, there is also a codename. Ubuntu 7.04 is also called "Feisty Fawn".

The package is probably called:
linux-restricted-modules-<something>.deb
... but it cannot help you outside a regular login.

misstajah · 07-04-2007, 01:38 PM

The CD ain't mounting ... :S something's not right here, i tried to access the content of the CD, output: "/mnt/hda doesn't exist" ain't hda for the hard drive?

i'm installing ubuntu again and i set the user

edit: eth0 is recognized

not to mention that i want my wireless too xD

Simon Bridge · 07-05-2007, 12:42 AM

Cool... now you have a regular user account things get easier:

System > Administration > Restricted Drivers Manager

You'll be asked for a password. See what it configures.

Ubuntu is a "rootless" system. The first user configured is the admin... that user gets to use sudo. It is, in practice, more secure this way... though it takes some getting used to.

"sudo su -" will got you a root terminal.
Get used to aptitude and synaptic, these are incredibly powerful tools.
Look through: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Feisty

misstajah · 07-05-2007, 04:49 AM

System -> Admin -> Restricted Drivers Manager says , after the password, that there's nothing to be done...

I went manually, got the .run file from nvidia. tried to install it, output: "you need libc libraries to create kernel interface." so i tried to install the libs from the feisty CD. I wrote the output in latest post about /dev/hda ...

Simon Bridge · 07-05-2007, 05:16 AM

argh! Don't do that!

Possibly the driver manager is looking for a nv module instead of querying lspci. (I've gone 100% open source a while ago so I am losing touch with the tools.)

I don't trust the nvidia installer... anyway, you'll lose it next update.
I take it you are online with Ubuntu now?

System > Admin > Synaptic

search for "nvidia" and tag the packages appropriate to your system.
install. Then retry the driver manager.

Read the wiki link. You may want the Beta option.

misstajah · 07-05-2007, 12:44 PM

The only thing missing was nvidia-glx... odd... else it would work normally with nothing of this...

Anyway, i thought about reinstalling some of the nvidia drivers on the feisty CD. I still need to mount the cdrom drive

he just won't recognize it ... :S
Can't i just download from an ubuntu dropsource and get them or something, like for the add/remove programs?

Simon Bridge · 07-05-2007, 06:55 PM

I have covered this twice: post #24 and #26.
Read the wiki in the link.

misstajah · 07-06-2007, 04:15 AM

Still nothing

Code:

can't mount /media/cdrom: special device /dev/hda doesn't exist

I read all about mounting CD's and stuff, but still nothing

Simon Bridge · 07-06-2007, 04:46 AM

Feisty should automatically mount CDs ... you get an icon on your desktop. Show me your /etc/fstab and the content of /media

The error is because /dev/hda don't exist (well...) and it shouldn't.
The primary master ide will usually be sda, primary slave is sdb, etc. (In my case it is sde and sdf...)

Code:

simon@indigo-prime:~$ ls -l /dev/hd*
ls: /dev/hd*: No such file or directory
simon@indigo-prime:~$ ls -l /dev/sd*
brw-rw---- 1 root plugdev 8,  0 2007-06-21 02:38 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root plugdev 8, 16 2007-06-21 02:38 /dev/sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root plugdev 8, 32 2007-06-21 02:38 /dev/sdc
brw-rw---- 1 root plugdev 8, 48 2007-06-21 02:38 /dev/sdd
brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8, 64 2007-06-21 02:39 /dev/sde
brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8, 65 2007-06-21 02:39 /dev/sde1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8, 66 2007-06-21 02:39 /dev/sde2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk    8, 67 2007-06-21 02:39 /dev/sde3

simon@indigo-prime:~$ dmesg | grep cdrom
[47182.389383] cdrom: sr0: mrw address space DMA selected
simon@indigo-prime:~$ dmesg | grep sr0
[   33.776546] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 0x/52x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[   33.776600] sr 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0

simon@indigo-prime:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,unhide,noauto     0       0

simon@indigo-prime:~$ ls -l /dev/sc*
brw-rw---- 1 root cdrom 11, 0 2007-06-21 02:39 /dev/scd0

... so my cdrom is /dev/scd0 (As you see, things are different now.)

But the links I gave you are about installing that nvidia driver.