Display problems with Suse 10.1
 

Hi,

This is my first time installing Linux, Suse to be exact, and I'm having problems as you might imagine. First off, I have an AMD Athlon 2600, an ATI Radeon 9250 graphics card, 40GB Maxtor HDD, Pony pc3200 512MB RAM. , and a 32" LCD HDTV that has PC input so it can be used as a monitor (I don't think hdtv is relevant but I'm putting it out there).

I've tried installing this three times and I've made progress but it's not where I want it yet. So, I'll explain where I've gotten to and hopefully you guys can offer suggestions.

The first time I went with a Gnome desktop and I got a little crazy with the software additions in YAST. A bunch of packages either failed or were not present and there were a couple of conflicting packages. At the end it recognized all of the hardware (I was doing a dualboot with Windows XP, I resized the XP partition). It recognized my graphics card correctly, but my monitor it recognized as Samsung, which it is, and 75P at a 1024x768 resolution. I tried to do the first boot and all I would get is a black screen and I could see nothing. My TV came up with a message saying "searching for signal" and then "not supported mode." I could just boot into Runlevel 3.

For the second time, I decided to completely wipe my HDD clean and just do a clean install. So, this time I did not try to add any special software, just the standard Gnome installation. This time only one package was absent, it was something to the extent of 'libgnomeui'. Which I'm guessing is a library of files for the Gnome user interface. During the hardware config it recognized my graphics card as a completely different card. A 5690 series, I don't even think that exists. I changed the monitor type to LCD and a resolution of 1024x768, initially it recognized it as a Samsung monitor/75p and 1024x768 resolution. I was able to get to the login screen, put in my username and password but an error message came up in very, very small print. I had to get 2" away from the screen to read it. It said something to the effect of my login lasted less than 10 seconds and that if I didn't log out that chances are I have a defective disc. So, I could not log in at all. I thought this error message could've been attributed to the one package missing and that the display problem could've been because of the incorrect drivers being installed (I've encountered this particular problem in a Windows enviroment). Eventually I was able to get into the FVMW (I typed sax2 in the command prompt) or something like that (I couldn't quite make it out because of the extremely small text) and I tried fooling around with the resolution and to no avail. It was kind of like poking around in the dark.

The third and final time I wiped the HDD clean and decided to go to KDE and the installation was flawless. No missing or failed packages and I got the same end result. Small text, logins lasting less than 10 seconds. I'm not sure where I'm going wrong here.

I picked up the disc with a book called Suse 10.1 Bible. Unfortunately, like the real bible I imagine, it does not tell you how to deal with problems. Just tells you the right way to do things. So, if anyone can offer me help I would greatly appreciate it.

P.S. I have searched the forums and sought out what I thought were answers to my questions but it did not work. I tried Sax2 to see if I could alter the frequency (when I was getting the black screen) and I tried vi and nano /etc/X11/org.conf but to no avail. I also didn't know what I was doing with those two commands either. Needless to say I'm really out of my element with Linux coming from the Microsoft ship.

Thanks a million in advance,

Brandon

Hi.

Welcome to the linux world.

Does your installation go smooth a readable GUI?

Then goto the folder /etc/X11 as root
there you can find a file called "xorg.cong.install"
this is the configuration of the suse which it uses to install.

so backup your original xorg.conf

#mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.original.bad

#cp xorg.conf.install xorg.conf

This may help you.

Try this and post your responses.

Thanks,

I just want to let you know up front that I made a mistake on the version, it's actually 10.0. NOT 10.1 as I originally stated. I don't know of the advances made, but this could present a problem and I may have to go a different route.

I can try that, but would you mind telling me what the commands mean? I'm not dumb, but I definitely don't know Linux. So, if at all possible could you dumb it down for me and give me a walk through? I would just like to know what I'm doing and what it means. You say back up my original xorg.conf file right? Does the first command back it up and second replace it? Yes, the installation has a perfectly readable GUI. So, I'm not sure what happened between the install and actually getting into Linux. If that doesn't work, I'm guessing the drivers are incorrect. If the drivers are incorrect, is there a way to replace them through Runlevel 3? I hear that Linux's command prompt has a lot more functionality than Windows' command prompt. So, I'm guessing you can I just don't know how. I'm just trying to think ahead of the game, but probably worrying myself more than anything. Also, if the graphics card deal is worked out, what about the deal where it says "your login lasted less than 10 seconds if you didn't log out there could be a problem with you install disc" ? Or does that fix both problems?

Thanks a bunch.

Brandon

Hi Brandon.

The file xorg.conf is the key configuration file for the X window system i.e GUI. If there is any error or misconfiguration in that file, GUI wont start.

Suse does one nice thing. It saves the configuration of the GUI while installing. that file is /etc/x11/xorg.conf.install

So, if we have any problem in the GUI, we can replace the autogenerated file with the original file.

Thats waht i told you to do.

the mv command moves or renames the file.

the cp command create a copy of the file. This is must, because this is the original file. Never delete the original file in linux. Because no one can recover the deleted file in linux.

After doing this try the GUI look.
It may not be correct. Because for installation the system does not take any additional features of the video card.

Try login in runlevel 3.
then give "startx".
This is the command to start the GUI.

The console or the shell is more more more powerful than
the DOS.

We can do almost everything in the shell itself.
we can browse the net, mail, hear music, play video, etc.

So, learn to use the shell. it needs less memory.

Wishes.
T.Shrinivasan.

T,

Thanks a lot. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to get into the root. I was poking around as educated as I could and I got it. Although Shell was not telling me what it was doing when it was backing up and replacing the config file. I just heard my computer doing something and I didn't know what. So, I waited around another 5 or 10 minutes waiting for something to happen (just like dos sometimes). So, I tried the init 5 command and I had some scrolling and I just stayed in the Shell. Not sure what that was about, but I rebooted and everything was ok but the text size. I was able to get into the control center and figured out how to alter the text size. Now, some text is still small (I altered all of the text at once) but I can live with it for now as I get my Linux IQ up. Other than that, Linux is great. It's vibrant and easy to get the hang of. I don't know if that's because KDE is very similar to Windows. I don't think that Gnome could be that much different in functionality, just appearance. For now, I'll learn Shell and then try to make my way into basic programming. We'll see what happens.

Thanks a bunch again,

Brandon

Hi.

Nice to hear this.

Good. You are learning linux.

keep hacking.

The answers are coming.
T.Shrinivasan