I just managed to get debian to install on my computer (attempt 11 i think) and now I am having a problem where it boots up but right when gnome would start, my screen goes black and my monitor gives a warning that the refresh rate is too high. I did ctrl alt f1 and tried to get to my xorg file but i get permission denied and when i try to use sudo, I get a warning that I am not in the sudoers file. what can I do here? thanks.

EDIT: ok, i logged in as root, but am still getting access denied. Can this even happen? oh yeah, my monitors native resolution is 1366 x 768 @60Hz and my graphics card is a 2gb HD4870 x2.

you need to add yourself as a sudo user.

from another guide, this is how you do it:

[mirandam@charon ~]$ su
Password: <--- Enter root password

[root@charon mirandam]# echo 'mirandam ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' >> /etc/sudoers
[root@charon mirandam]# exit
exit

replace mirandam as your user etc. this does sudo with no password (you can set it will password too see man page).

For now if you don't want to do that you can simply log in as root using su and change the xorg config, then exit out of root

I am still getting Permission denied as root.

I also tried gtf 1366 768 60
and it returned :
# 1368x768 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 47.70 kHz; pclk: 85.86 MHz
Modeline "1368x768_60.00" 85.86 1368 1440 1584 1800 768 769 772 795 -Hsync +Vsync

EDIT: Great, now ctrl alt F1 QUIT WORKING wtf is wrong with this installation. I'm going to try to reinstall off a different disc and see if it works (although i doubt it, it took 11 tries to even get something bootable)

ANOTHER EDIT: OK, got it reinstalled, but its doing the same thing.
xrandr gives me 'Can't open display' and nothing else I have tried has been remotely helpful. I am able to get to xorg.conf now, so exactly what should I add?

Ok, just to confirm that I understand you current situation. You installed Debian stable (Lenny) and when x starts your monitor complains that the refresh rate is too high, X exits, dropping you into a console?

If the above is correct you should be able to specifically tell X what refresh rate to use by reconfiguring the xserver-xorg package. To do this please run the following command:
If it asks you questions that you don't know the answer to, just leave them blank (or whatever the default is).


As far as I know xrandr will only work within an x session.

Evo2.

I had to add the bolded section to my monitor section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. I got the sync rates off the box my monitor came in an you could try getting the ones for yours and entering them.:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Hope that helps.