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I have just installed RH7.2. My machine has a Amptron mb, Athon processor, w/ sis 730 video chipset, 256M ram. The installed went fine. When I try to start linux now, I see all the startup messages upto localhost login the the screen blanks. I think I have a video set-up problem judging from other posts. So how do I get out of the blank screen to try changing the configuration?
Thanks in advance,
Joe
what do you mean by blank screen? Does it happen after you type in your user name and password or before?
If it happens before, try to boot from cd with 'linux rescue' option, and then I recommend you to edit your /etc/inittab level to set your runlevel to 3 (that is, not to start X Windows when you boot, so you can play around with video configuration without always having to boot from cd or disk to make any changes...)
Then try to make changes to /etc/XF86Config file in the 'Device' section... here I can't really help you, for it's driver-specific... try to search the web, it's very likely that people using the same card experienced the same problems...
Try, for example to add the line
Option "noaccel"
I had similar problems to install RH9 on my laptop, since the video card (ATI Radeon IGP 320-M) was not supported...
I can't really help you more, for I'm a new to linux (just had it for one week... and spent most of the week going through documentation...)
Distribution: Lots of distros in the past, now Linux Mint
Posts: 748
Rep:
It should flip through a blank-unblank thing a couple times, then tell you you have an error. When it drops you into the console, log in as root, then enter your password. Then, try 'xf86cfg -textmode' to try another video option.
If it doesn't drop you into the login screen, you have a couple options. One, try hitting ctrl-alt-F2. This will drop you into the second console terminal. The first console terminal (ctrl-alt-F1) is used for X startup, so it's not that useful. By the way, you have six terminals (you can add more, but six are standard), F1-F6.
currently my runlevel is 5 so the startup script (what the right terminology for all the messages that go by at the beginning?) is trying to start x-windows and put up a graphical login screen. I think that's when the screen blanks. I don't see any blanking - unblanking. I had tried ctrl-alt-F1 and nothing happened. I'll try ctrl-alt-F2 and see if that works.
ctrl-alt-Fx didn't do anything. Apparently the graphics settings were thoroughly hosed. Booting from the CD w/ linux rescue got me to a login prompt. I logged in as root and ran /usr/X11R6/bin/xf86config. It says sis 630 (& 730) are basically unsupported. I picked 800x600x256 colors and now have a visible display.
Now next problem, xf86config doesn't have an option to pick a logitech wheelman usb mouse. when I boot, Console mouse services fails to start and I get "oops() invoked from gpm.c(978) /dev/mouse: no such device" Typing "ls -l /dev/mouse" yields a link to "input/mice". What should this be for a usb mouse and how do I change it?
Thanks,
Joe
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