Having successfully installed “Tiny Linux” (Slackware or Linux 2.2.6) and used pkgtool to install xbase and xprgm (also downloaded from http://tiny.seul.org/en/ ) and having performed xf86config (more questions relating to that later) several times, perhaps shoddily for lack of information that SuperProbe did not supply about my video card, I get the following response from issuing the “startx” command:

Execue failed for usr/XllR6/bin/X (errno 2)
_X11 TransSocketUnixConnect: Can’t connect: errno 111 giving up.
Xinit: Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to x server
Xinit: no such process (errno 3) Server error.

Linux and Slackware are still new to me, so try not to assume that I know anything. (Perhaps 3 or 4 commands…) I’m baby stepping my way through this to see if I can put some life in an old computer that got its windows damaged by a virus some years ago. The hard drives (400MB ea.) have both been formatted and Linux was installed by 14 floppies. The monitor is a Compaq 460-P made in ‘94 - no info on their website - no surprise. The computer is an old Digital Celebris GL 5100st with some kind of early Pentium processor, and 32MB of RAM.

SuperProbe provided the following information:

First Video: Super-VGA]
Chipset: Matrox Millennium (PCI Probed)
RAMDAC: TI Viewpoint 3026 24 bit Truecolor DAC w/cursor, Pixel-mux, Clock (with 6-bit wide lookup tables (or in 6-bit mode)

I do not pretend to understand most of that, but I do know that xf86config wanted to know much more about the chipset and video memory than I was able to provide from that information.

How, if at all possible, can I get this baby to do anything more worthwhile than complain and ask me politely for a trip to the Salvation Army?

My regular (“Modern”) computer is connected to the internet via dial-up and contains a CD burner. The old one has a cdrom that I have successfully mounted and installed software (I assume that it is successfully installed - I still can’t use it!) from.

I am still logged in as root as I am still trying to get the darn thing to work.

Hardware is the main thing for you right now. If you are at all unsure of what your hardware is, the best suggestion I can give you is to crack open your case and see what all you have. Write everything down (makes, models, chipsets--look at the boards and cards and find write down all the stuff on the chips, you never know what kind of info you can get from that). After you've got everything written down, go to http://www.google.com/linux (G4L) and input the information. For instance, I had an ethernet card that was given to me that looked VERY generic. It had no information on it except for some little white writing on the chip. It said MX9715aec-c on it. I had no idea what it was. I went to the before mentioned website and plugged that in. I got only ONE webpage about it for Linux and it was from a FreeBSD site that said it was made by Macronix and used the Tulip driver. I would never have know this without checking out the chipsets.

After you've got all that information, you will then know how much of your hardware is Linux compatible. If it's compatible, then you'll be able to get the drivers for your video card, sound card (if any), etc. Once you get the info on your video card, you should also be able to see if it's 1024KB or what (you might need this). Try searching G4L for your monitor to see if there's any specs on it's horiz and vert rates (my old Hyundai didn't have any specs on the Hyundai site, but I found it using G4L). Write all this stuff down.

Now, boot up, log in as root, then run xf86config. You should now have enough information to answer all the questions. After you've answered all the questions (start with the lowest resolution possible), cd to /etc/XF86Config and then open it using your favorite text editor. Look through the file and make sure everything is the same as what you entered when xf86config asked you the questions. If it's not, change it. If it is, close your text editor without saving anything (in case you accidentally put a letter or a character somewhere and don't remember). Then type in the CLI startx. If it doesn't work, go to the following file and open it using your favorite text editor:

/var/log/XFree86.0.log

and tell us what all information it gives you. This will log everything that X tried to do to open up. It will tell you what failed as well as what was successful. Good luck!

Thank you for finding and replying to my post. I had begun to believe that it was not going to be replied to.

It seems that it will be necessary to crack the case and hunt down information. I had suspected that it might come to that. Certainly a “weekend project” that will likely need to wait at least until the weekend following this one (I’m traveling). I hope that you will still be around when I get back to it. It is possible that a snow storm will change my travel plans… in which case, I’ll get a chance much sooner.

I normally view the Slackware forums and you had referred to this post in it. I noticed that you only had a few posts so it would be easy to find it. I just did a search for all you posts and found it. It's a good thing you mentioned it in the other forum. I never really thought to look in the other fora as my primary concern was with my Slackware. I'll most likely try to help out in the other fora where I can now. Thanks!

The weekend is always a good time for case cracking.

Though I don't post often here, I'm always lurking. I'll be around.