Mandrake 10.2 Kernel execution problem
 

Gentlemen/Ladies;

I am a new forum user so please be patient with me. I searched the forum for my question but am afraid that I'm not sure of the correct terminology to describe my problem. I did some research on the web, so here I go.

I am running Mandrake 10.2 and installed it with no problems; my hardware runs fine on my Athlon processor and I even was able to delete old version 1 of OpenOffice and install version 3.1 with no problems. The other Mandrake software utilities and applications seem to run fine and are very useful. I like the system a lot.

I also have a Win2K PC and have a KVM switch for both, which runs OK with Linux. The Win2K display image is centered on the monitor but the Mandrake graphical image was off center. I noticed in the Mandrake hardware setup that I had an old monitor selected, so I selected a generic monitor for the correct resolution and frequency.

The system told me to reboot and therein lies the problem. It told me to login again and I fear that I may have entered or done something wrong; I told it to restart and now the kernel script (?) doesn't execute completely.

I get the following message while it executes:
Starting postfix: /usr/sbin/psotconf: warning: My hostname localhost is not fully qualified name - set myhostname or mydomain in /etc/postfix/main.cf

The message appears twice and then the screen clears and a new message appears:
Mandrakelinux release 10.2 (Limited Edition 2005) for i586
Kernel 2.6.11-6mdk on an i686 / tty1
localhost login:

Well, hello! It seems to want me to login, so I do (as user) and I get the following response:
Last login: Wed Nov 18 01:24:15 on tty1
[ted@localhost ~]$

I am now in Limboland. And everything was working so well .........

I realize that it wouldn't tell me to fix something without a good reason BUT I am unclear how to proceed. I can navigate between directories and all of that but this really has me in a fix.

I would really appreciate some guidance on how to fix this so I can get my Linux back up and running.

Thanks.

I would disregard the postfix error message for now, as it doesn't appear to have anything to do with the problem.

What I suspect happened (and I'm not really familiar with Mandrake) is that by changing the setting you selected for your monitor, your video configuration file was edited (this is probably why it told you to reboot) but the edited file now contains something that your video card or monitor do not like, and so X (the graphical environment) is not starting. Instead, since it cannot start the graphical environment, it is putting you at the login prompt.

First thing I would do is look in the folder /etc/X11 and see if there is a backup of your xorg.conf file, from before you changed the monitor setting. If there is, then backup the CURRENT xorg.conf (rename it something that you'll know what it is) and replace the xorg.conf file with the original, from before this problem. Now log out and reboot (there are other ways, but...) and see if the situation is back the way it used to be.

NOTE: You will need to be logged in as ROOT to edit xorg.conf or to rename and move the file(s).

If this process brings you back to the way things were, then we can revisit the image centering problem a different way.
If this does NOT solve the trouble, or there is no backup of the xorg.conf file that you can find, then post the entire xorg.conf file for us, so we can see what's going on in there.

Also, just for brevity, please tell us, if you know, what make+model of video card you are using, and which driver you are using for that?

Kind regards,
Sasha

Mandrake 10.2 kernel problems
 

Sasha,

Thanks for the information and quick response. I logged in as root and will check out this proposed solution.

Regarding the video card, I see the following when the PC boots up:
SIS 6326 PCI
8 MByte Video memory BIOS 1.26
Supports VESA Bios Ext V2.0

I am not sure of the video driver I selected for X-Windows. I'm pretty sure that I selected a driver for SIS6326. I can poke around in the directories and perhaps find the information.

Regards,
Ted

@ Ted,

cool, let us know how it goes; you shouldn't need to 'poke around' to find which video driver you're using, that would prolly get frustrating :) -- instead, once you locate the xorg.conf file, you can read the "Driver" line in the file; there should be only one line beginning with "Driver".

For the record, you may have as good success with a Vesa driver, as you do with an SIS driver (because it looks like an older card, and it's SiS), but let's not concern ourselves with this now; first you must figure out what happened ;)

Best regards.

Sasha

Sasha,

Your solution worked like a charm. Thanks so much for the help.

I took a UNIX course in college and never thought that I would use it. I has proven very useful, for obvious reasons.

Regards,
Ted

Mandrake 10.2 kernel problems
 

Sasha,

Your solution worked like a charm. Thanks for helping me. I appreciate a forum like this for help and am glad I joined.

I think that I will stick with the setup I currently have ... no more "experimenting". It's easier for me to move the little knob at the bottom of the monitor to center the screen. Maybe later, I will get brave enough to try something else.

I took a UNIX course in college and never thought that I would use it. It has proven useful, for obvious reasons.

Regards,
Ted

Hey that's great :)

For the record, I remember way back when I switched from Win to Linux; my screen image was never centered in both OS's at any given time; when I booted the other OS, I had to fiddle with the monitor buttons, or adjust the scan frequencies in my xorg.conf file. Also, the display varied from one driver to the next-- the open source nvidia driver made the screen image waaay off, but the driver from nvidia.com made the image near perfect.

There are likely several other ways you could deal with this; if/when you want to fiddle with it some more, let us know what you're up to and we'll help out where we can.

Have a great day!
Sasha