Guest karigar Posted February 9, 2005 Report Share Posted February 9, 2005 Hi, I'm new to the forum, & mandrake. I'm trying to install MDK 10.1 on my old PC, via boot floppy (using cdrom.img ). The sequence NEVER asks for me to "insert CD # 2" during the install. So I get to the stage when I'm configuring display (selecting "vesa" from xorg seems to work for x-server), and I get the blue screen with the "X" that I can move with my mouse, and then.....NOTHING. I "ctrl-alt-backspace" out, and see "error, please change some settings." I'm assuming that I need stuff loaded from the CD#2, but don't know how... Help, anyone....!! (PS: the CDs worked fine on my newer PS with bootatle CD drive) Thanks [moved from Hardware by spinynorman - welcome aboard :)] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 No the error means that you have to adjust the videosettings :). All you need to get a working install is CD1. You should see a 'rainbow' screen not a blue one. Try lowering the colour depth to 8. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest karigar Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 My Video Card is a PCI card ArkLogic's Explorer VideoPro 64 FX (1MB) and monitor is ViewSonic's VX900. I've literally exhausted the possible combinations that the install software allows. Yes I have bit depth set to 8 (it doesn't allow 16) xorg's "vesa" setting is the only one that brought me this far, all others would just error out. I have tried all combinations I could think of, i.e. 1200x1600; 1024x1280; 800x600; 640x480...at 8bit, 15bit, 16bit The fact that I got the "blue screen with movable X" means something, right ? I'm not ready to throw out my video card (or the 10.1 mdk CD :-) yet.....!!! Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 (edited) Try only the VGA or SVGA "generic" card at 8 bit, 640x480, maybe 800x600 tops. Else you will need to throw away the 1 MB video card, at minimum. Addendum: You can try to install in text mode and try options there. Edited February 10, 2005 by User Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest karigar Posted February 10, 2005 Report Share Posted February 10, 2005 >>"Else you will need to throw away the 1 MB video card, at minimum." I'm trying to make my old comp re-usable by putting linux on it, so buying a new video card sort of is not what I'm looking for. Maybe I should install an older distro ? Or will I have the same prob there too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Depends how far back you go. I got one system that the best I could put on it without needing to do tons of tweaking or modifications with an SiS 1MB PCI video card was Red Hat 7.0. It makes for a good multinetworking router/firewall by dropping it down to text mode only. Anything newer basically just failed miserably. Another system, the best I could do was Red Hat 9.0 and that was with a 1MB Matrox Millineum video card, which isn't that bad, in graphics mode ( the OS actually still had the specific driver for it in there - but your card may need to go as far back as above). So perhaps try Mandrake 9.0 or less. I believe the kernel match for RedHat 9.0 is Mandrake 8.0 (could be wrong there - trying to go off of memory on kernel matches at the time). That is another thing about Linux, that it does not take MS's lead into making sure to always work in a simplified GUI at Standard VGA mode 640x480 at 16 colors as a failsafe, so it doesn't matter what card you have in there if it fails. All Oses should do a no need for anything but basic VGA mode desktop upon video display failure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest karigar Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Thanks. I'll try 9.2 that I have CDs for before I go down any further. I'm looking to getting some decent graphics in the install I end up with finally. With ref. to running it in text mode, why would the(any) system be picky about the graphics at all! If 10.1 would just install, I could run it in text mode ?? Your point is Good though :=> "That is another thing about Linux, that it does not take MS's lead into making sure to always work in a simplified GUI at Standard VGA mode 640x480 at 16 colors as a failsafe, so it doesn't matter what card you have in there if it fails. All Oses should do a no need for anything but basic VGA mode desktop upon video display failure. " Thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Short reply: if you get the blue screen with the X mouse pointer and it moves, your graphics settings are fine. No need to use something else for that reason. There can be some issue with that testing screen, which leads to you not getting the rainbow colours. How about just not testing the graphics setup? Just make sure you finish the installation, and sort things out later? If you can get the blue-screen-of-life, X works, but if there are other problems, you may just have to sort those out on the command line - we're here to help, no worries. Side comment: I don't get it, every other time I see a comment about something not working, people start advicing to go back to older Linux versions. Linux is not MSWin, things don't just go bad. Sure, Mdk is for 586 or newer, but if you're still in the realm of 486 or older, you're in more trouble than this board can fix.... Disclaimer: this is not an attack on anyone here, just noting a strange trend - and I'm not claiming that an older version will not work, just that as a general rule, on Linux things get better, not worse (except for old hardware that they just don't support anymore, ... Linux is still made to run on 386 machines,....), this includes that Linux has gotten faster over the years: the kernel, Xorg, windowmanagers, everything. Anyway, you could run vnc on it and connect to it with your other pc, assuming you have a network. I have an old PII 350 as a headless server, works great, uptime slowing moving towards 400 days...!!! No need to throw anything out if the graphics are not playing nice. This is Linux, lots of cool things to do, and a headless server is as good as any machine to play around - just make sure you can properly connect to it once it's running. SSH and on a windows machine Putty should do fine, followed up by VNC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User Posted February 14, 2005 Report Share Posted February 14, 2005 See if I word this right (appologies if I don't). arTee... Short reply: if you get the blue screen with the X mouse pointer and it moves, your graphics settings are fine. No need to use something else for that reason. Absolutely not, it fails on the setting after that basic resolution setting that comes after the X, which is no longer the simple VGA install resolution. And if the new setting/resolution/driver cannot install, then it is useless as a basic installable simple GUI desktop OS. And if the test fails, you go back and drop back to the X, then that is a failsafe dropback not at the requested, supported (if correct) resolution. There can be some issue with that testing screen, which leads to you not getting the rainbow colours. How about just not testing the graphics setup? Bad move, as a wrong setting can actually damage a video card or display. And bypassing the test then also leads to not knowing for sure if the resolution or the actual hardware even supports it. Then upon bootup failure, who's to say it is a video problem or not afterwards. Or you can just blow up something. Just make sure you finish the installation, and sort things out later? How? By blowing the video card/monitor out as a possible very bad scenario. That testing is there to do, else why bother put it in period. You may want to take chances, but most people will not. And I don't think the Mandrake (and others) wants things like that to happen either (see issues about ruining CD-ROMS too). I don't get it, every other time I see a comment about something not working, people start advicing to go back to older Linux versions. See your own comments below (486 etc. - you're in more trouble than this board can fix?). If they did in fact have a 486 processor, then Mandrake 10.1 wouldn't install, period. It only comes with the 586 Kernel. Older systems/cards/CPU's are no longer supported by newer OSes. Only choice will then be to go back to an older version. But a video failure/issue should never be the cause to do that, but for Linux it is more likely than not to be. (See later down this post). And in many instances older version worked fine on the same supported hardware, and did not with the newer version. That means something got broke or is no longer supported, but it never should have. Especially when a basic absolutely needed hardware, at it's most basic setting, should work always. Linux is not MSWin, things don't just go bad. Sure, Mdk is for 586 or newer, but if you're still in the realm of 486 or older, you're in more trouble than this board can fix.... Of course they do. Just look at this board's posted problems, and many unsolved ones. That goes for all OSes, and will continue to be so. Mdk may be for 586 or newer, but 586 has nothing to do with video, nor should ever have anything to do with it. A ISA/PCI/AGP/PCI-e/etc. video card should always work regardless of the processor. Programming for the standard VGA capabilites basic display properties is not processor dependent. Are some repairable. Yes. But also many have still not been solved. And seeing as the install actually starts for this person and proceeds and only fails upon video testing, means that this person is not on a 486 cause Mandrake 10.1 is only for 586 and up. Bad point/comment to make on your part. And this board is here to fix issues, for all Linux versions, new and old, hardware/software, etc.. Go read the commentorial/editorial/description. Disclaimer: this is not an attack on anyone here, just noting a strange trend - and I'm not claiming that an older version will not work, just that as a general rule, on Linux things get better, not worse (except for old hardware that they just don't support anymore, ... Linux is still made to run on 386 machines,....), this includes that Linux has gotten faster over the years: the kernel, Xorg, windowmanagers, everything. Things get better on newer equipment/hardware only. And that is mostly due to it being programmed/designed for newer equipment/hardware. And the hardware itself is so much faster and better. If Linux is to be a GUI OS then the simplest VGA mode needs to always be accessible upon every video failure. MS does it very well, Linux does not. Windows has not gotten faster too? Of course it has. So has Unix, Mac OS, etc. But that is also easily due to faster processors and other hardware. Sloppier coding will run faster on the newer hardware, just by the fact that it's faster hardware. Try recompiling the latest "current" 386 kernel on a 386 system, and an older one with all of the same options. If you bench them, the newer one runs slower. (That is something you can try yourself for actual proof). Anyway, you could run vnc on it and connect to it with your other pc, assuming you have a network. I have an old PII 350 as a headless server, works great, uptime slowing moving towards 400 days...!!!No need to throw anything out if the graphics are not playing nice. This is Linux, lots of cool things to do, and a headless server is as good as any machine to play around - just make sure you can properly connect to it once it's running. SSH and on a windows machine Putty should do fine, followed up by VNC. Why? They (and most) just want to do a basic install of Linux and at least get it to boot to a standard simple working VGA Mode on a 586+ processor (as suppose to be supported). If anyone who just starts out with a newer Linux OS has to revert to a text mode Linux, then that is absolutely no enticement to get them to switch from Windows, or even DOS 3.x for that matter. And if they got to do tons of editing (especially in text mode), etc. (and many people are clueless to do that) then that is not a good point. Bad point! Most Linux distros no longer install a 386 or even come with the 386 kernel, so it no longer installs to the basic 386 processor kernel. Which they should as the newer x86 (486,586/686 and higher) processors still have/include all the same physical structures/instructions. They have all been designed mostly to install to the extra 586 processor instruction set, just like windows OS (no more 386 kerenls, just 586+ kernels). Linux should be better than that. That is intentionally by design from the programmers/designers of the Linux kernel (and all the other Oses) and distro programmers/creators. So to make a point that current linux installs and runs on a 386 is wrong. Yes, many can actually write/rewrite all the coding to do so, but if I (or anyone) want a Mandrake 10.1, Fedora 2/3, etc., to install on a 386 machine from the downloadable ISO's, that will never happen. So no idea where you get that idea from. Perhaps you can point us all to that wonderful current, new and decent distro that does and without needing to completely learn the whole Linux OS/kerenl and a manual recompiling/tweaking. I would love to install it! (on a 386 or 486 ). A (any) failure in the video in Windows automatically drops to the 640x480, 16 colors (if needed for info purposes 4-bit) GUI mode (including longhorn) and not into an OS safe mode. Linux (whether Xorg, Xfree or if there is anything else) keeps erroring out, crashes and/or in most instances keeps retrying to restart the X display, or miserably crashes as oppose to just dropping to a minimal standard GUI. Noone should need to edit or text trouble shoot files anymore for video. Worst scenario should be a 16 color GUI desktop, ugly (colorless) as it is. Get to the desktop, and then install/test video drivers. VGA is the very basic of video programming and it is a basic standard that all video cards work on. MS windows, all versions, always respect that and so (almost) always boot up to a poor looking GUI. Windows upon installation of a new video card, upon failure of a new driver, upon accidental deletion, etc. does that (usually), period. Linux still hasn't taken a good page (one of the very few good pages ;) ) from their book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 14, 2005 Report Share Posted February 14, 2005 I just have to take this in steps, there are too many issues to respond to and this board doesn't allow enough nesting/quotes to do so properly... See if I word this right (appologies if I don't). arTee... Short reply: if you get the blue screen with the X mouse pointer and it moves, your graphics settings are fine. No need to use something else for that reason. Absolutely not, it fails on the setting after that basic resolution setting that comes after the X, which is no longer the simple VGA install resolution. And if the new setting/resolution/driver cannot install, then it is useless as a basic installable simple GUI desktop OS. And if the test fails, you go back and drop back to the X, then that is a failsafe dropback not at the requested, supported (if correct) resolution. Wrong, the initial problem indicated that when testing the configuration in the summary the blue screen of life of X.org came up, with a mousepointer that moved: I get to the stage when I'm configuring display (selecting "vesa" from xorg seems to work for x-server), and I get the blue screen with the "X" that I can move with my mouse, and then.....NOTHING. This means that the X window system is up. There is something wrong in getting the rainbow image to show up. X is not likely the issue, rather some script that has to fetch this image. In any case, X is up and running at the chosen setting in the config, which means that that setting is fine as far as X is concerned. That the mousepointer is moving also indicates that all is fine up to that point. So things go wrong beyond that point, not at that point. There can be some issue with that testing screen, which leads to you not getting the rainbow colours. How about just not testing the graphics setup? Bad move, as a wrong setting can actually damage a video card or display. And bypassing the test then also leads to not knowing for sure if the resolution or the actual hardware even supports it. Then upon bootup failure, who's to say it is a video problem or not afterwards. Or you can just blow up something. Well, I think I just explained above why this is not going to be the matter. Blowing up graphics cards doesn't happen, and blowing up monitors, which is most likely what you are thinking of, only happens when you set too high a frequency and your monitor has no protection against that. The viewsonic vx900 is a TFT monitor, and TFT monitors are protected against too high frequencies, as are probably most CRT monitors made in this millenium. As for blowing up hardware with wrong settings, if the hardware is according to IBM PC spec (see below for your shot at the title in terms of the LG-CDROM reference), the only hardware that you can blow up with the wrong settings are non-pnp ISA cards and/or ISA bus scans (not sure what that was, maybe 2 cards that both try to put data on the bus, thereby short circuiting their outputs) and driving the monitor frequencies out of spec. Both cases are dying out - ISA is not used anymore and monitors have proper protection circuits. Graphics cards don't break, X just doesn't start. Just make sure you finish the installation, and sort things out later? How? By blowing the video card/monitor out as a possible very bad scenario. That testing is there to do, else why bother put it in period. You may want to take chances, but most people will not. And I don't think the Mandrake (and others) wants things like that to happen either (see issues about ruining CD-ROMS too). Blowing up of up to spec hardware is not going to happen. Beside that point, the guys X was up and running, so the card and the monitor had no issues with that X setting. Ruining cd-roms that are not according to spec is like ruining a leaky boat. It seemed to work fine, but it was an accident in progress. I agree that the LG cdrom troubles were bad, but 100% the fault of LG. And they did admit as much. And yes, it did inconvenience (drive to panic levels) many Linux novices and experts alike. I had such a drive (still have it, it's out of service but it does work), I revived it with some effort, but otherwise exactly as prescribed by the LG info as put forward at the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 14, 2005 Report Share Posted February 14, 2005 I don't get it, every other time I see a comment about something not working, people start advicing to go back to older Linux versions. See your own comments below (486 etc. - you're in more trouble than this board can fix?). If they did in fact have a 486 processor, then Mandrake 10.1 wouldn't install, period. It only comes with the 586 Kernel. Please check what I wrote and tell me the relevance of what you're telling here. I realise very well that the topic starter has no such machine. Older systems/cards/CPU's are no longer supported by newer OSes. Only choice will then be to go back to an older version. But a video failure/issue should never be the cause to do that, but for Linux it is more likely than not to be. (See later down this post). And in many instances older version worked fine on the same supported hardware, and did not with the newer version. That means something got broke or is no longer supported, but it never should have. Especially when a basic absolutely needed hardware, at it's most basic setting, should work always. No, Linux has to be compiled for a certain system (i586, i386, x86-64 aka amd64, IA64, Power, etcetc). But drivers, once in, are generally not taken out. In this case, there seems to be a problem with a 586 class machine that has graphics going with the vesafb driver. That driver is fine and included in any decent/recent Linux + X.org/XFree distribution. Note also that the topic started had the graphical installation, so vesafb was indeed working fine. Linux is not MSWin, things don't just go bad. Sure, Mdk is for 586 or newer, but if you're still in the realm of 486 or older, you're in more trouble than this board can fix.... Of course they do. Just look at this board's posted problems, and many unsolved ones. That goes for all OSes, and will continue to be so. Nonsense. If you do nothing to a well running Linux system which is properly configured, it will keep on running fine. Pointing out that there are many here who don't have the pleasure to own such a system is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that: 1) on Linux, one has to do something for things to change - and in most cases, it's the user who has done something (made some change, as root) without realising it 2) people here usually have problems with configuration and hardware - things that are not so well supported OSes should (and most do) keep running fine once properly set up. I admit that it takes the proper hardware too. But the fact that my server, which has a standard mdk 9.2 install, without anything special, just urpmi'd packages and the configuration of my choice (which indeed did involve some text file editing), has been running now for over 1 year, functioning as an internet/print/scan/music/firewall server. Other OSes are very similar in this respect. Give a user a Linux pc, but make sure they don't do anything as root. Whatever they do (within reasonable limits - not dropping the machine, trying to break the hardware by constantly (un)plugging, etc), the system will not break - they may break their own account, but some other user account will not be affected and the system will start normally. It's only on (badly configured, as they generally are..) windows machines that this doesn't work this way. Which is why I said: Linux is not like Windows. Mdk may be for 586 or newer, but 586 has nothing to do with video, nor should ever have anything to do with it. A ISA/PCI/AGP/PCI-e/etc. video card should always work regardless of the processor. Programming for the standard VGA capabilites basic display properties is not processor dependent. Are some repairable. Yes. But also many have still not been solved. And seeing as the install actually starts for this person and proceeds and only fails upon video testing, means that this person is not on a 486 cause Mandrake 10.1 is only for 586 and up. Bad point/comment to make on your part. And this board is here to fix issues, for all Linux versions, new and old, hardware/software, etc.. Go read the commentorial/editorial/description. The 586 quote was an example, so there's no point in implying that I mentioned it in direct relation to the graphics issue of the topic starter. It's not a bad comment from my part, I just failed to make it clear enough that I intended it as a more general example, not specifically related to this graphics issue but to the trend of recommending older Linux versions. To state it again, more clearly: if you have a 386 you have to change distros because Mandrakelinux is not going to cut it for you. BTW reverting to an older version of Mandrakelinux will not help if you have a 386 class machine (including 486 - so 32 bit pre-pentium, to be more exact), since Mandrake has been for i586 since quite a while - according to distrowatch, since forever, but I'm not 100% sure that's correct. It might well be though... Also, really, what exactly is your point in telling me (moi) what this board is for? :P Disclaimer: this is not an attack on anyone here, just noting a strange trend - and I'm not claiming that an older version will not work, just that as a general rule, on Linux things get better, not worse (except for old hardware that they just don't support anymore, ... Linux is still made to run on 386 machines,....), this includes that Linux has gotten faster over the years: the kernel, Xorg, windowmanagers, everything. Things get better on newer equipment/hardware only. And that is mostly due to it being programmed/designed for newer equipment/hardware. And the hardware itself is so much faster and better. If Linux is to be a GUI OS then the simplest VGA mode needs to always be accessible upon every video failure. MS does it very well, Linux does not. I agree on the last point - Xorg doesn't revert to the fbdev if nothing better is available. However - see below... at the very end... I disagree with all other statements. See just below. Windows has not gotten faster too? Of course it has. So has Unix, Mac OS, etc. But that is also easily due to faster processors and other hardware. Sloppier coding will run faster on the newer hardware, just by the fact that it's faster hardware. Try recompiling the latest "current" 386 kernel on a 386 system, and an older one with all of the same options. If you bench them, the newer one runs slower. (That is something you can try yourself for actual proof). Nonsense. Check the LKML for proof of comparisons. 2.6 kernel series is faster (and more responsive - so feels even more faster) on the very same hardware. Search the LKML for "pre emptive' 'I/O scheduler' and then some. Loads of interesting things. I don't have to bench it, others have done loads of benching already, which is why Linus accepted lots of these real innovations into the kernel. Google is your friend. On a side note, I have run 2.6 and 2.4 kernels with the very same setup (same distro, installed software and services running) and I can tell you that the benchmarks don't lie - 2.6 is faster on the very same hardware. In the same vein, KDE 3.0 is faster than KDE2.x, and KDE3.n+1 is faster than KDE3.n, again: on the very same hardware. People who use GNOME a lot have mentioned the same for GNOME 2.8 vs 2.6 vs 2.4 - I have too little experience to be able to tell. The same goes for OpenOffice.org. 2.0 will be even much faster, but boy, was 1.0 faster than pre 1 versions! Again, on the very same hardware. Contrary to that, MSWin has been slower on the same hardware going from win3.1 via 95, 98 to ME (not sure, but I think 98SE was actually faster than 98 ), and from NT via 2000 to XP (and now 2003 server). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 14, 2005 Report Share Posted February 14, 2005 Anyway, you could run vnc on it and connect to it with your other pc, assuming you have a network. I have an old PII 350 as a headless server, works great, uptime slowing moving towards 400 days...!!!No need to throw anything out if the graphics are not playing nice. This is Linux, lots of cool things to do, and a headless server is as good as any machine to play around - just make sure you can properly connect to it once it's running. SSH and on a windows machine Putty should do fine, followed up by VNC. Why? They (and most) just want to do a basic install of Linux and at least get it to boot to a standard simple working VGA Mode on a 586+ processor (as suppose to be supported). If anyone who just starts out with a newer Linux OS has to revert to a text mode Linux, then that is absolutely no enticement to get them to switch from Windows, or even DOS 3.x for that matter. And if they got to do tons of editing (especially in text mode), etc. (and many people are clueless to do that) then that is not a good point. Bad point! Ehm, my point was that without graphics mode it could run a graphical desktop via vnc that one could connect to, and in that vein, a system with no good graphics is not useless at all. For instance, if he wants to learn to use Linux with an old spare machine, setting it up in text mode and running a vncserver, then connecting with a vncviewer or java capable web browser from another machine (which may well be windows too), will give him a nice desktop inside a window of any resolution and colour depth, completely unrelated to the state of the support of his graphics card. An easy way to toy with Linux, it will appear as a desktop inside a webbrowser or vnc-client window. From what I understood, the topic starter has another machine, he just wants to put Linux on some obsolete machine. Most Linux distros no longer install a 386 or even come with the 386 kernel, so it no longer installs to the basic 386 processor kernel. Which they should as the newer x86 (486,586/686 and higher) processors still have/include all the same physical structures/instructions. They have all been designed mostly to install to the extra 586 processor instruction set, just like windows OS (no more 386 kerenls, just 586+ kernels). Linux should be better than that. Why 'should Linux be better than that'? A 586 class pc costs nothing more than the time and effort to pick it up - they are being thrown away by the dozens. I have a P166mmx that I can't seem to get rid of - no fun to use, but does run mdk10.1 (slowly but surely - only 48MB of RAM). And it's actually the distro builders that make it that way, Linux 2.6 compiles fine for embedded processors to 64cpu multiprocessor machines. It's just some compiler flags. That is intentionally by design from the programmers/designers of the Linux kernel (and all the other Oses) and distro programmers/creators. So to make a point that current linux installs and runs on a 386 is wrong. Yes, many can actually write/rewrite all the coding to do so, but if I (or anyone) want a Mandrake 10.1, Fedora 2/3, etc., to install on a 386 machine from the downloadable ISO's, that will never happen. So no idea where you get that idea from. Perhaps you can point us all to that wonderful current, new and decent distro that does and without needing to completely learn the whole Linux OS/kerenl and a manual recompiling/tweaking. I would love to install it! (on a 386 or 486 ). Up until shortly, SUSE was still compiled for 386 (not sure if it isn't anymore - I think it actually is, despite distrowatch telling otherwise - in any case, I know many packages are still compiled for SUSE for 386). And all the rest is beside the point - as I said, if you are trying to run Linux on a 386 and you're not doing it for embedded development (where the 386 is the target, of course), you're getting yourself into more problems than this forum can fix. Even if you could have mdk 10.1 for 386 - who would want to run anything on that? No 386 can fulfill the demands of the most average computer user - it will be dog slow on regular things that the common user expects, like flash, java etcetc. A (any) failure in the video in Windows automatically drops to the 640x480, 16 colors (if needed for info purposes 4-bit) GUI mode (including longhorn) and not into an OS safe mode. Linux (whether Xorg, Xfree or if there is anything else) keeps erroring out, crashes and/or in most instances keeps retrying to restart the X display, or miserably crashes as oppose to just dropping to a minimal standard GUI. Noone should need to edit or text trouble shoot files anymore for video. Worst scenario should be a 16 color GUI desktop, ugly (colorless) as it is. Get to the desktop, and then install/test video drivers. VGA is the very basic of video programming and it is a basic standard that all video cards work on. MS windows, all versions, always respect that and so (almost) always boot up to a poor looking GUI. Windows upon installation of a new video card, upon failure of a new driver, upon accidental deletion, etc. does that (usually), period. Linux still hasn't taken a good page (one of the very few good pages ;) ) from their book. You have a point here. Though with proper video drivers, this should not be necessary. I'm taking a wild guess: on systems with supported graphics, vesafb should not be necessary, and on others, vesafb will be the default one that gets set during installation. Who goes from a supported graphics card to a non-supported one, where he will need the vesafb driver anyway? I think in some cases vesafb isn't bad, but really, all video drivers should be in the system, so that vesafb is not necessary. I prefer the Xorg developers to focus on that instead of putting effort into making life less miserable for those few who go from a supported graphics card to a supported one. BTW, if you change graphics adapter, you should actually get the configurator when booting when new hardware gets detected. Also a better solution than using vesafb. So on second though, I actually don't think you have such a good point here either. Leaves none of them standing as far as I can see. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User Posted February 15, 2005 Report Share Posted February 15, 2005 (edited) I going to try and keep this short and I'm not going to waste hopefully time (and BB space, and those quotes on quotes, etc. :) ) correcting some errors in your last post. The X popping up on the screen with a blue background, and then nothing (notice the nothing???) is a video crash and "also" happens when the video fails and it tries to or drops back to the basic VGA install screen to allow a different configuration attempt. A script failed to get the pallette image? Please try something better than that. It's just accessing a file. If you put in a different card, it most likely wouldn't be affected by the script and in all likelihood would get it with the same script you claimed that failed. Not a script issue. Video cards cannot burn out? Of course they can. 1) Overdriving a monitor can cause monitor to draw current and current surges from video cards to blow them out. Can also cause shorts/sparks/discharge on the connector and fry out the card. 2) Using an improper clock frequency on a video cards chip (especially overclocking over a safe value - usually no more than 5%-10% is a safe normal allowable range) will ruin that card. Wrong drivers and settings can send commands/signals that can fry them out too, even if/when the driver is for a different card. Both points above can also cause the Motherbaord to also burn out/ blow, fry, etc. from a frying/blowing/burning video card. Warnings from card manufacturers are there (NVidia, ATI, Matrox, etc) of possible damage to both monitors and the video cards. Hmmm, now if the card can never blow, why manufacturers bother with the those specific warnings? (Rhetorical question) Quick example of a bad issue. My Pine OEM G2 MX200 gets identified as a G4 MX440 on Mandrake 10.0. Fortunately I caught the error and set the proper card manually. And fortunately the chip in my Pine Card has the same clock frequency rating. But if it had been an older version of the card with the older chip it could have been fried if the driver drove the chip at the MX440 card's default setting. Hopefully, karigar at least will get back to us on if the older version worked for him. It should, as I never had and issue with 10.0 on my Acer notebook (AMD64, ATI mobility 9600) and installed straight from CD to bootup, but did not in 10.1 (originally doing a 10.1 upgrade, and then even doing full wipe and a 10.1 clean install). The things I needed to do according to Xorg were preposterous to have to do to get it finally working, when it did work fine on 10.0. Yes it is up and running on 10.1 and is working good now. But it never should had been so much work to correct the video issue if it worked great on 10.0. Edited February 15, 2005 by User Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 15, 2005 Report Share Posted February 15, 2005 If his X crashed, why could he still move the mouse? Something in the background crashed/blocked, so not all is well. BUT: his X was alive and well if he could move the cross-shaped mousepointer. Which is what I gather from what he wrote. He also could kill it properly with ctrl-alt-backspace. All perfectly fine behaviour for X. In which case his monitor was not going to be blown away - extremely unlikely, practically impossible if not for a production error. Like I mentioned, TFT monitors all have protection circuitry (trust me, one floor up from where I work they design TFT drivers, I've had plenty of discussions with designers of those), much like most or all recent CRT screens. So your point 1 is not the case in any way that I can see. Note: I don't say that a blowing monitor could not blow up the graphics card, and that in turn the mobo - just that monitors don't blow up anymore, and have not for a while. Have you ever come across a message of someone who blew out his video card due to a wrong setting with X? I have seen lots of X related issues, but never that. I'd be interested in a link if you have, one that rules out faulty hardware (as in: "I used this wrong setting with X, and blew my card out." "Hey, that happened to me too! Darn X!"). Much like with the LGcdrom issue, if there's something wrong, it must show up. With 3 to 5% Linux marketshare on the desktop, there should be at least some posts that hint this. Maybe I missed those, in which case I'd be interested to read up on it. (Note: before the Mdk LG-cdrom problems there were some mentionings of people on Gentoo who's drives got affected - but they just thought the time had come...) In terms of card operating out of frequency: this may be true for overclocking which is popular on Windows, but on Linux there's hardly such a thing, and definitely not in the regular drivers. Also, when reading windows test reports, they usually tell about overclocking up to the point of getting artefacts and stuff - meaning: the card does get to take a lot of heat, but no instant death. And just setting the pixel clock too high won't break the card, that's protected just as monitors are. Please don't confuse the system clock frequency with the output pixel clock frequency - those are two different things. BTW on your issues with your Acer laptop, naturally you would have had to jump through hoops with mdk10.1 since at that time ATI had not provided proper X.org drivers - let alone for amd64. I guess those troubles are part of the growing pains, which you can blame on all of the following: - yourself for buying hardware with no open source drivers (at least, OSS drivers that offer full use of that hardware)... but then again, not a lot of choice... - ATI for not getting their act together all those still on Win for not moving to Lin and giving it the marketshare it deserves - XFree developers (well, one in particular) for messing up and making it necessary to move to Xorg - Linux for not being 'there' yet.... or whatever Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest karigar Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 Thanks "aRTee" and "User" for the extensive discussions. I learnt a lot! Now to my update: As promised, I tried out 9.2 distro CDs on my old PC. This time, I even got the "successful" test screen (multiple colored vertical bars) with a "Yes / No" choice. On clicking "Yes" the install completed. [The spec for card was "ARK200PV" which I confirmed from driverguide.com is an alt name for my card. The monitor I chose was FlatPanel Generic at 800x600, 8 bits] Then on reboot, the PC went thru all the OS loading, reached the X stage, and then BLACKED OUT...repeatedly, even after waiting for 10+ mins. I can't even "Ctrl+Alt+backspace/F1 to F8" out of this one. I can however, boot up to "failsafe" mode (using LILO's option) and look at my log in /var/log, and test different X configurations. Nothing works yet. Maybe I'm not doing it right. The PC hangs after every test attempt, and no "Ctrl+Alt+backspace/F1 to F8" out of it works. My questions: Why does test say it's OK??!! I chose XFree86 's ver 4.3. (there's an older 3.x version available. Any point in trying this?) How can I replicate the "install>test" scenario so I can try different options while logged on in text mode ? (For every setting, I have to go thru the whole install process again, takes about 1.5 HR! The 10.1 distro had an "upgrade" step/option early in the install, so I didn't have to re-partition, reload all the files every time. This 9.2 doesn't seem to...) I also tried the "custom" setting for card with some conservative refresh rates, etc. Same thing. Test "succeeds" but X won't come up at reboot. I have nt given up yet, but I'd like to try the idea of using "ssh" & "vnc" to open this PC up in my newer windows machine. any tutorials available on that? Also, is the "failsafe" mode usable for networking? How do I get into an "All Systems ON" kinda mode (except for my video of course) so I can use this machine via the other machine? This is getting to be quite a pain. I still see the light at the tunnel end, though... At least I (seem to) have a working install (minus video) Looking fwd to help / comments!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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