Virtually blank screen on Fedora 4 load
 

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 Laptop (old, I know) that I'm trying to get Fedora 4 on. Initially, I loaded up the first boot CD and entered graphical mode. I got a white screen that was about 3/4 the total surface area of my actual screen. Then I reloaded using the text-based, got everything "working" (I finished the instal and was rebooting to start Fedora for the first time) when I got the same white screen upon startup. Based on the searching I did and gut feeling, there's somewhere that my monitor must be getting declared wrong ... both size and refresh rate, I'd guess at least. I don't know where / how to fix it, though.

Any thoughts?

You have a Trident video card.

Go here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=161242

Read down to comment #3 by Mike Harris.

Grab the libvgahw.a file he has posted (from FC3)

Put it in your /usr/X11R6/lib/modules directory.

I had to use the vesa driver in my PC as the trident driver still didn't work.

(edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace trident with vesa)

Good luck

I grabbed the .a file, but (maybe this is a simple "newbie" question) how do I get it on there? I don't have access to a console to log in with or to copy from other drives or edit any reference files. Is there a way to boot from grub that allows you to stay with the initial text display (which is small (aka: 640x480 or so ... 2" black bar around the screen), but readable)?

Boot into run level 3 from the Grub screen

Any single digit decimal value appended to the kernel parameter line should be used as an init value. Type 3 and then boot.

or

Maybe change to runlevel 3 until you're satisfied with the video:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archiv...hp/t-1234.html

Got it!

Changing out that file worked beautifully. I booted right in after that, and just need to update things so I get full resolution now.

Thanks for the help.