Cannot Startx
 

Okay, got an amd athlon 1700 with 256mb ram, 350w PS with my old hard drive just screwing around.

I installed Debian linux (a pretty new version I think), did everything okay, got it to be a bootable system after two tries. heh heh..... only it can't start the GUI.

I hit startx and i get a loop of errors that looks a little like this.....

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xserverc: /usr/bin/X11/X: no such file or directory
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xserverc: exec /usr/bin/X11/X: no such file or directory

xinit: Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 111): server error




I tried as root as well as just a normal user. I can use the command prompt line interface business perfectly well though. I don't know what other info to include, sorry. Maybe a problem with xfree86 or whatever? I just want to play around with Gnome honestly =)

Thanks

apparently there's no X. which is pretty strange since u have the startx command. look in that directory and c if u have X. it should b a symlink pointing to xfree86. otherwise u could try apt-get install x-window-system. do u have gnome already installed? u could do startx /usr/bin/gnome or wherever gnome is installed and c if it loads that. which it won't...... since that runs off of X but it can't hurt to try.

okay, tried to do... startx /usr/bin/gnome and the same thing happened.

so then i apt-get install x-window-system and it installed and asked me some questions about my system. I answered them to the best of my ability, but i didn't know everything.

So i did a startx after it finished, and i got some new errors! nice!! (EE) No devices detected. I think it was talking about my video card or something. The end of it was

Fatal Server Error: no screens found
x connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown)


Is there any way to redo the configuration process maybe?


(more info about my system: ati all in wonder pro ulta 128 agp 32meg, 17" LINK Monitor, max reso. 1024x768)

run /usr/X11R6/bin/xf86config, just type that in and hit enter. u'll go thru some questions make sure u have the right drivers. look em up online. look up the specs for your monitor as well, ir refresh rates,horizontal sync and wutnot. the ati uses the ati driver. there r also drivers on the ati page for linux if u want to try that. the genreic driver is vesa if u want to try that in case somein's not working

Gonna say the same thing, it sounds like a graphics card thing.

I recently installed debian woody and got absolutely nowhere with it, because it doesn't seem to like the fact that I've got a geforce 4 m420 installed. I had to work out how to use lynx to get the driver and install that first, then do the xf86config (or is it xf86 configure now???), but I also ended up upgrading it to "sarge", that is, until I tried knoppix which detected everything, so I installed it to the hard drive over the top of the sarge, now everything works the same as it did from the live cd, except I'm never satisfied and am having to learn how to "improve" things :D

regards

John