Hi all

I loaded Mepis on my main machine where I'd deliberately attached every peripheral I own, and it fired up just fine,it did everything I wanted, loaded on a hard disk install in just 15 minutes, played everything fine straight from install, ok the webcam needs configuring but Hey this left everything else in it's wake...
Then I thought Great... lets put it on my other desktop, it wouldn't even give me a text screen, all I got was a black screen from live boot...?
The specification of the machine is quite modest;
Mobo MSI KT4AV
512mb generic Ram
AMD Duron 1800mhz
Logitech USB mouse
Generic 102 keys Keyboard
Compaq presario MV500 Monitor
FX5200 MSI 128 T AGP graphics card
2 cheap speakers
40GB hard drive
Optorite DVD R/W
LG DVD ROM

The machine connects to the internet through the on board ethernet.

I would like to crack this but am at a loss as to where to begin, not even booting to a text prompt means there's no way of even starting...

Other linux distros work just fine although PClinuxOS has a similar problem but in reverse...

Can anyone help, maybe some commands before live boot are required, I don't know...

Mad Malc

Only thing I could suggest is you consider the format on the Hard Drive....could it be dos, etc. Also, did you have partitions with Reiser instaead of ext3?? I've had trouble along these lines in the past. Sometimes u have to wipe the entire HD before installation. The System Rescue CD is good for that. Good luck.

Hi Esage

I don't think that's the problem as it will not even boot as a liveCD on this machine...
Conversely I had a hang at 'Hot Plug' on the machine Mepis works well on with PCLinuxOS, that just required unplugging the scanner to get PCLinuxOS to work.
Unfortunately the above machine is pretty much empty of plugged in peripherals and there is just a blank screen after booting up. The machine itself works fine with Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS, Mandrake move, Knoppix and SUSE 9.2 live, so there must be something that Mepis just doesn't like about my setup and it maybe part of the integrated components on the motherboard. The Hard Drive is fine.

Still baffled...

Mad Malc

Can you be more specific? Do you get lots of boot activity followed by a black screen? Or is it just dead?

If the former, you've probably booted OK but there's a problem with your X11 configuration.

Hit control-alt-F1 and that should give you a text-mode login screen. You can then play with X11 configurations (it ain't fun, but it can be cone).

It may also be possible to hit F3 at grub time and select a different video configuration.

Hi all
The messages that arise during boot are as follows:
REALTIME operation time out exceeded switching to normal
Config network fail
Starting web server; Apache2
server not found.

Then starting K display manager KDM
is followed by blank/black screen.

The Lan connection does get its drivers loaded and is up and running ie the router handing out the DHCP addresses is connected and fired up, I'm typing this on another machine on the same Lan without rebooting the router. The errors are the same whether choosing newer kernel, older kernel or safe mode.

pressing Ctrl-Alt F1 does give a text based login

Logging in as root and giving the command startx
gives the following

X: warning; process set to priority -11 instead of requested priority -10
Fatal server error
server is already active for display 0

If this server is no longer running remove /tmp.X0-lock

So far I just keep getting the blank/black screen and then pressing Ctrl-Alt F1 to get back to the text based screen.

Anyone got any suggestions..?

Mad Malc

When you first boot, if you hit F3, you get a list of possible video configurations. Try one or two.

From the command prompt, you can kill the existing X server:

killall -9 X

Then startx will give you a more useful message.

You probably have to create a new /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file. Creating these is a bit
of black magic. Here's one that worked for me on my Averatec (1024x768) after I had
the same symptoms as you.

http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~gvcormac/XF86Config-4

Note that from the command line you can still connect to the internet and grab this
file with wget.

I hope this gives you enough to go on. From the fact that you figured out "startx"
I assume you have some savvy to fill in the blanks.

Hi gvc
Now up and running in live mode, ok the graphics is only 800x600 on this machine but it's a small and old monitor.
Thanks for your help, now I can do a Hard drive install, funny thing though despite the boot announcing that setting up the Lan had failed , here it is happily working away...
Just goes to show.
I wonder if the hard drive install will beat the 15 minutes on the other machine now the blank/black screen problem is solved. I still appears to have the brilliant functionality which made it a winner on the other machine and now it works on both. Also will a hard drive install enable me to increase the screen resolution?
Will soon find out.

Thanks

Mad Malc

Glad to hear you're having some success.

If Windows can run your monitor at greater than 800x600, so can Mepis. But, as I said, getting the right XF86Config-4 file is a bit tricky. Mepis doesn't seem to have very extensive tools for this purpose.

I've had similar situations and thus believe your X settings are too demanding for your actual video hardware. And well behaved hardware switches off (or eg. blanks the screen) so that the hardware doesn't get damaged.

If you have a backup copy of an XF86Config from one of your previous installations, try that one. This works in most cases. In other cases (maybe because your XF86Config is indeed an xorg.conf?), you may try copying only Section "Modes" from your old file to your new one. Another idea to get a working XF86Config is to boot some LiveCD with a Linux, for example a KNOPPIX.

If nothing of all these works, you can try running "X -configure" as root to get an initial XF86Config as a basis for own enhancements.

HTH,
Luke