The logs I'm looking at are Xorg.0.log Xorg.0.log.old dmesg and messages. I didn't find any fatal errors or any tagged with EE. Should I be checking any other logs, and where will I find them?

Well, if there are no errors.....could you post the xorg.conf? is at /etc/X11/



Regards

Sure...

# Xorg configuration created by pyxf86config

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us+inet"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "radeon"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Hmmm...are you using the liveCD to get those logs?

I'm asking this because, if you use Knoppix's LiveCD and do this:
You'll be opening knoppix's xorg.conf and not the xorg.conf of the Fedora partition, and if from the LiveCD you're checking for errors at /var/log, then you're seeing the logs of knoppix and not fedora, which is what you/we need.


Tell you what, boot from knoppix's liveCD, if you have no problem in getting the graphical interface to start up, you should be using KDE, if you're lucky and knoppix has mounted the fedora partition, you should see a device icon on the desktop, if not, from knoppix's liveCD, open a console and post the output of this:


Regards

No, I was in a hurry, so I just used explore2fs to open the files from XP. Should be the fedora files.

I'll put in knoppix and see what happens.

The knoppix live cd I had was an older one, and it wouldn't boot at all, so I put in the new simplymepis live cd (its kde also I think) and it booted fine.

Disk /dev/sda 80G
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cyl

Device boot start end blocks id sys
/dev/sda1 * 1 5254 42202723 7 ntfs
/dev/sda2 5255 9729 35945437 f w95 LBA
/dev/sda5 5255 9729 35945436 7 ntfs


Disk /dev/sda2 80G

Device boot start end blocks id sys
/dev/sdb1 * 1 6377 5122321 c fat32
/dev/sdb2 6378 6402 200812 83 linux
/dev/sdb3 6403 9729 26724127 8e linux LVM



Hope this is the right list.

Well, this is something that you could try. Since at simplymepis you have graphical access with no problems, you could borrow its xorg.conf (should be configurated to work already with your system)

Now, assuming that Fedora is at the partition /dev/sdb2, on simplymepis open a console and type:

Restart the system and try to boot into fedora




Regards

Sorry the responses are so slow, I have not been able to configure mepis to use the internet, so I have to boot back into xp each time.

Let's see if I'm catching on....correct me if I'm wrong..

"mkdir /mnt/fedora"
create an empty directory on the ramdisk

"mount -t ext2 /dev/sdb2 /mnt/fedora"
mount the fedora partition to the empty directory on the ramdisk

"mv /mnt/fedora/ect/X11/Xorg.conf {,.bak}"
rename fedora's Xorg.conf Xorg.bak

"cp /ext/X11/Xorg.conf /mnt/fedora/ect/X11"
copy mephis' Xorg.conf from the ramdisk to fedora's /X11


When I tried it, all I got was a condensed version of the man for the mount command and an invitation to learn more by typing man 8 mount. I looked at the man page and tried several other combinations, to no avail.

I did look at mephis' Xorg.conf before I rebooted again, and didn't see anything more specific regarding the video card than what fedora's said.
There was a "ton" of other info (to cover all the bases) like info for a tablet and stylus, notebook touchpad, literally anything you could put the boot cd into.

Any other thoughts? I thought of changing fedora's conf by hand, but explore2fs does not support writing (only read-only). If I am unable to mount fedora to mephis is there another way to modify that file? Also, what kind of information would I need to dig out of windows to modify it?

Thanks for your patience!

as an aside....

Is it time to bail on fedora and try another distribution, or would I likely have the same problems?

Yes

No, it was -t ext3 because that the FS that fedora is using on your system

It will be renamed to xorg.conf.bak

Yes but be carefull with 'upper' and 'lower' case, Linux, as any other *nix, is casesensitive, meaning that Xorg.conf and xorg.conf aren't the same thing..

I don't think that you could have the same problems with other distributions, but I can say that I didn't have any problems with fedora, however, if you want to try other distribution, nothing is stopping you to do so, PCLinuxOS or Ubuntu are good choices if you decide to change Fedora



Regards

Thanks...

I will try a few more times with fedora before I quit it.

I knew it was ext3 but typo'd it while looking at sdb2

Got to remember that the .bak is appended to the end of the filename with that command, and not changed like in windows!

And yes, u-case and l-case will probably be my biggest obstacle in typing. Need to get the point and click gui working asap!!

Larry

Went back to simplymephis and was able to mount sdb2 to the /mnt/fedora directory, unfortunately, I was only able to see the boot folders. Everything else (that I need I guess) is located on the sdb3 partition. When I try to use the mount command on that partition, all I get is an error, because it is not a "file system" ????? Fedora created all the partitions when it installed itself, so I don't know what it is referring to.

Right....because Fedora was installed using LVM partitions...


There are some utilities that i've read about to know LVM partitions on a system, since I don't really know if any of those utilities exists in the simplymepis livecd so, try with any of this commands at the command line and post the output:

or

or




Regards

Not to kick on Fedora and start a flame war, (and I hate to advise anyone to quit on any distro), but if you can't get it going, I'd suggest trying Ubuntu. Of all the distros in my sig, it was the only one that worked correctly "out of the box".

Cheers

Whatever you do, steer clear off LVM the next time. For the average home user, it's more trouble than it's worth. Its only advantage is that it makes resizing partitions a little easier. On the other hand, you end up with a mess of cryptic volume names, awkward mounting procedures and, most importantly, some real nightmare scenarios if something goes wrong with your LVM. Recovering a broken partition can be hard and LVM makes things only worse by adding another loop to jump through. Whether you reinstall Fedora or install Ubuntu instead, I would recommend using custom partitioning instead of the defaults. All you need are a / and a /home partition. It's not that much more difficult.