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Good install but locks before getting to login


daveld
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I'm new to usergroups. This looks like a good place for help.

 

I've run Mandrake 8 & 10 and now I'm trying Mandriva 2006 free. The install goes great; just as easy as 10; when it ask me to remove the install disk for reboot everything goes fine, bootloader works, I choose Mandriva, graphics are fine for a short time and then goes completely crazy and locks the computer up. No graphics problems during the install or bootloader.

 

I'm running a AMD 900 mhz, 512 mb ram, RIVA TNT2 32 mb on an ASUS 333 bus board. I thought it was my graphics card so I got a GEForce4 4200 128 mb from my brother ( whom I'm trying to convert to Linux) and it did change but only to show me (2) side by side screens of non graphic start-up in very bad color. Oh, and its still locks up.

 

Help, I'm hoping this version of Mandriva with a WINE or WIN4LIN add-on will rid me of windows for good.

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Some problems were encountered with nvidia and ati graphics on 2006. Are you using 2006 free?

 

If so, when your graphics go crazy, you can press CTRL-ALT-F1 to get a console prompt, login, and then type init 3 to change runlevel so that X isn't running.

 

When you were installing, did you check/test the graphics resolution at the summary screen? Usually it's a good idea to do this, just to make sure the resolution you chose is a good one, and supported.

 

I would suggest downloading the drivers for your card directly from Nvidia. This should solve your problems. However, what you can do is once you've logged in at the console, type "mcc", and then configure your display here. Choose a basic resolution at first to see how it goes. If that has problems, just choose a standard VESA driver to get you up and running in X, so that you can then get the correct drivers from Nvidia.

 

Keep us posted, and welcome to the board :beer:

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OK. I reloaded Mandriva 2006 again. When it got to the page where you check your configurations, the graphics is "not configured" so its not detecting anything. I go in, set my driver to VESA (generic), monitor to Dell M780, and the resolution to 800 x 600 24mpp. I test it and the screen goes blank for a moment and then comes back to the graphics configure screen. I tried GeForce4 (generic), just about all the resolutions and even generic monitors. It all does the same thing except when I use the GeForce4 driver it locks up and nothing except the reset button on the cpu frees it. I did try the init 3 but I am not good enough with command lines to know much about what to do next.

 

This is Mandriva 2006 free. Mandrake 10 doesn't mind the Geforce 4 or TNT2. Does the Powerpacks work better. I would hate to know that I would have to pay membership to get the right drivers. (I'm trying not to be cheap but for what I use linux for is simple home use internet, office, games, etc...)(Oh & did I mention that I hate mswindows)

 

Thanks for the help. Is there anything else I'm missing?

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At the end of the day any config utility for the monitor and graphics write a file called xorg.conf in a directory /etc/X11

 

 

You need to use a text based editor if X is not working.

vi is my favorite but its a bit quirky .. another is nano which can be installed from the CLI using urpmi nano

 

You need these two parts....

 

Section "Monitor"

Identifier "monitor1"

VendorName "Plug'n Play"

ModelName "Dell M780"

HorizSync 30-85

VertRefresh 50-160

 

Section "Device"

Identifier "device1"

VendorName "nVidia Corp."

BoardName "RIVA TNT2"

Driver "nv"

Option "DPMS"

EndSection

 

This is using the opensource nv driver not the commercial nvidia. I recommend you get that once X is working and you have a fallback... you can download it from the nvidia site,

 

 

edit ...

If you can copy the one from 10 that works this will also work :D

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Wow! I'm learning tons. vi is quirky but I managed to get your suggestion done. I'm beginning to believe that the "free" Mandriva 2006 is not user friendly because even with those changes to xorg.config I still haven't got it to work. It did seem to prevent it from locking up but that was with the Geforce4 card. When I put the TNT2 card back in to see if the "RIVA TNT2" setting would work better, it started locking up again. Changing the resolution only seems to change the design of garbage on the screen. The mouse pointer does not lock but it also doesn't do anything but move.

 

Your help is greatly appreciated and this is a learning experience I needed. Screwing up your computer seems to be the best way to learn about new things. I knew DOS pretty well years ago so this just seems like old times again.

 

Got any more suggestions.

 

I am going to reload 10 back on my hard drive and partition off a section so I can have 10 & 2006 free. I am currently having to suffer with windoze 2000 for the internet experience.

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vi can be funny when you're not used to it. Another good easy one is nano. Just "urpmi nano" to install it. All the keys you need to use are at the bottom of the window, so you don't have to remember them :P

 

Have you tried visiting the nvidia archive, and downloading an older nvidia driver? This might help with the garbage your experiencing with. 2006 is supposed to be quite bad for Nvidia and ATI cards, but maybe try LE2005 and see if that actually works any better. If so, you can take a look at xorg.conf on this machine, and then compare it against the 2006 one to see what went wrong/right, etc.

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Is there a chance I can replace the xorg.conf in 2006 with the Mandrake 10 xorg.conf? I don't know how different the files will be.

 

I have also downloaded the latest IA32 from nVidia with configuration instructions. My plan is to reload mdk 10 % Mandriva 2006 on my system. When I do that, I'm assuming I can read across the hda's to work on the files from inside 10 but that may not be the case. How friendly are the two versions? Would it not matter being in nano or vi doing the work?

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When I put 2006 on my systems one of them had its graphics totally screwed up. There are problems with the version of xorg in 2006 for ati and nividia. If you have the nvidia drivers you could boot into failsafe and install the drivers and edit your xorg.conf (all you will need to do is change nv to nvidia in the device section. If it is an older card you will want to use one of the older drivers. In my case the 7676 driver would not work so I used the 7174 driver. There should be no differences between the xorg.conf file in 10 and 2006. Make sure you have the correct kernel source package installed. Since 2006 was released there has been an updated kernel.

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Is there a chance I can replace the xorg.conf in 2006 with the Mandrake 10 xorg.conf?  I don't know how different the files will be.

 

I have also downloaded the latest IA32 from nVidia with configuration instructions.  My plan is to reload mdk 10 % Mandriva 2006 on my system.  When I do that, I'm assuming I can read across the hda's to work on the files from inside 10 but that may not be the case.  How friendly are the two versions?  Would it not matter being in nano or vi doing the work?

The files should be identical :D

I am guessing your problem is with the nv driver in 2006 ... which perhaps doesn't like the older TNT card... you probably want to download the NVIDIA driver from their website and this form polemicz needed the older 7174 version ... so 'I'd say start there!

 

Once you reinstall 10.0 you will have a seperate partition for it and you can just mount it and copy the conf file across. I'd recommend getting your newer card in until then so you have a GUI to work with though its not needed ... this will work for the CLI when X fails to load....

 

 

[B]sl@ubuntu64:~$ wget http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-7664/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7664-pkg1.run[/B]

--10:07:51--  http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-7664/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7664-pkg1.run
          => `NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7664-pkg1.run'
Resolving download.nvidia.com... 216.228.121.15, 216.228.115.13, 216.228.115.17
Connecting to download.nvidia.com|216.228.121.15|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 11,299,821 (11M) [application/octet-stream]

.... etc ...

 

 chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7664-pkg1.run

 

will make it executable

then

./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7664-pkg1.run

and follow the instructions (you will need the compiler and the kernel headers installed)

 

Then in the readme it explains you need to change

 

Driver="nv" to Driver="nvidia"

I would just add a comment "#" on the nv line and make another line with nvidia below it so you can easiliy switch back and forth...

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I downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run.txt & nvidia-xconfig-1.0.tar.gz from the nVidia website. I have 10 & 2006 loaded in separate partitions and the Geforce4 card installed. I'm sure I was suppose to know something more to set-up in my bootloader because it erased my 10 option. I chose 2006, ctrl+alt+F1 when it went blank, got to the comand line, typed mcc and tried setting up 10 in the bootloader but obviously "/boot/vmlinuz" is in the mbr & not on the hda that 10 is on. 10 is not running clean at all. Its probably a simple error on my part. Can you help me with that straight first? It will make accessing 2006 much easier & I will have 10 for my internet access. (in case you haven't figured it out, windoze has reduced me to a wimpering gui guy; I'm trying to change that)

 

Once I get that straight I will definitely march on with your suggestions.

 

Thanks for your help. Are these stupid questions?

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Hmmm do you happen to knopw which partitions were used in install for 2006 and 10?

We can just go for fixing 2006 and see if we can't just get the thing all running.

I'd recommend you try the same nvidia driver that worked for Polemicz above ... if you copy the wget line in linux it will download it for you.

 

Hopefully you should just need to run the NVidia run file, compile the never drivers as part of the package and then edit your xorg.conf file to say nvidia not nv :D You can even just try with the one you downloaded ...

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Have you made certain that Plug 'n Play has been disabled in the BIOS. Without doing this, Mandriva may not be detecting the Monitor at all and from what you are saying this seems to be the case when you are doing the post install settings. If it does not detect the monitor then no amount of fiddling with drivers will be of any use.

Cheers. John.

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Have you made certain that Plug 'n Play has been disabled in the BIOS. Without doing this, Mandriva may not be detecting the Monitor at all and from what you are saying this seems to be the case when you are doing the post install settings. If it does not detect the monitor then no amount of fiddling with drivers will be of any use.

Cheers.                                  John.

This is not exactly correct it has no need to detect the monitor at all unless you want to use automatic tools to configure it. However it may be the easiest way to get it working without resorting to the CLI. Its also generally good to have it disabled anyway....

My xorg.conf is written entirely by hand because I want two seperate displays and geometries for my projector which is widescreen and my LCD which is 4:3. If the driver is correct for the card and the settings are correct for the monitor and the card then it will simply just work whether detection is working or not...

 

Personally I wouldn't trust MCC to configure anything but some people prefer it. Like all graphical tools if it works then it gets you going without understanding why and if it doesn't you are forced to learn a bit of CLI stuff. The advantage of the latter is it allows you to configure any distro whereas MCC will only ever configure Mandrake (and then it only does a half assed job) once you understand the CLI part then you can usually get more out of the GUI tools too.

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OK, this is where I'm at. I tried loading the nVidia driver "IA32" in Mandrake 10 and it worked. I had to get out of X before it would but I did that with everyone's help. Then I figured if it worked in 10 I could do it in 2006. So I installed 2006 over 10 leaving my hda7 (/home) partition untouched. I did the same thing only to get a message during the driver install about not having a "precompiled kernel" for installing the drivers. It also said something about source codes needed. Sorry about not having the exact message pasted in. I'll get that later. I was so frustrated I didn't write it down. I still think I'm closer and I'm wondering if has to do with the "nvidia-xconfig" files I also downloaded. I going to dig deeper into it tomorrow.

 

Keep up the help, please.

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What you need is the kernel-source for 2006, so that the driver can be compiled into the kernel.

 

First, type:

 

uname -a

 

at a konsole prompt, and you will get a kernel version number. 2006 if I remember correct is 2.6.12.12. So if you then type this at the prompt:

 

urpmi kernel-source

 

you can then choose the corresponding kernel source. I believe the best one for you will be option 2 that pops up.

 

Then install the Nvidia driver again and you should be OK this time round.

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