This is starting to get ridiculous...

[Guest greeneggs]

A bad power supply can make any piece in the system look bad. That is why the problems have no pattern and keep changing.

 

Your probably right and I will try another power supply tommorow as part of my "differential diagnosis" to rule it out but if it was the power supply, why would everything work fine in RH and WinMe?. I'm not saying your wrong or anything...just wondering

[Guest ndeb]

I should mention that each time I've installed MDK 9.1 and get the summary window at the end showing all the different configuration settings, there is always a message in red lettering saying that the graphics have not been configured so at this point, I usually just go in and select whatever happens to be listed as the default/generic and complete the installation.

Do you test the video configuration ? U should do that and check that X works ok. Also, I would suggest not to configure X to start automatically at boot.

 

I'm still not sure this is the problem though because what happens sometimes is that I will boot up and see a login shell but no graphical desktop/windowing system and no matter what I try, nothing happens - almost as if Xfree has been completely obliterated or something.

I suppose you have already configured to start X at boot. Given that, this means X is not being able to start for whatever reason.

 

Bus  1, device   0, function  0: 

   VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 (rev 0). 

     IRQ 10. 

     Master Capable.  Latency=32. 

     Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe5800000 [0xe5ffffff]. 

     Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe6000000 [0xe601ffff]. 

     Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe5000000 [0xe57fffff].

The above is your video card, a Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 which is supported by X but the support is often buggy.

 

Anyway, as I suggested, run XFdrake and make sure that u do not start X at boot. Login from text console and use the command

startx

to start X.

 

So, I ditched my old Apollo video card and put in a Trident one.

This makes no sense. I thought ur trident card is integrated. If yes, then how can "put in a Trident one" ?

[Guest greeneggs]

It made no sense to me either until I asked my room mate (who works on these things) and he told me that sometimes, one card will be read as something else during installation (Windows does the same thing). Yes, I DO have an Apollo but MDK was reporting it as a Trident. Now, I DO have a Trident and it is being accurately reported as a Trident.

 

So which video cards work best with X and where do I find "XFdrake"?. I tried typing it into the terminal but nothing.

 

EDIT: I see what your saying now. Perhaps I used a poor choice of words. When I said I "ditched" it, I meant that I was no longer using it in favor of the Trident one. Yes, the Apollo is integrated :)

[Guest ndeb]

Yes, I DO have an Apollo but MDK was reporting it as a Trident.

From the output of

cat /proc/pci

that u posted, I see Apollo in:

Bus  0, device   7, function  0: 

   ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 64). 

Bus  0, device   7, function  4: 

   Bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 64).

This simply means you are using the VIA Apollo KLE133 chipsetBus 0, device 0, function 0:

Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8361 [KLE133] Host Bridge (rev 0).

Master Capable. Latency=8.

Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xe0000000 [0xe3ffffff]. [/code]

and the VT686B southbridge as shown by:

  Bus  0, device   7, function  0: 

   ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 64). 

 Bus  0, device   7, function  1: 

   IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586B PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 6). 

     Master Capable.  Latency=32. 

     I/O at 0xc000 [0xc00f].

The VT8361 northbridge has integrated trident video and more info about this can be found in http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=88#display .

[Guest greeneggs]

I know nothing about drivers, cards, etc. I am fluent in HTML, CSS, some Javascript and do a lot of graphics design (for money). I also happen to be pretty handy in the garden and have been known to throw down a few pizzas every now and then.

 

A "guru", I am not :wink:

[bvc]

have to be root to run

 

XFdrake --expert --noauto

[Guest greeneggs]

have to be root to run

 

XFdrake --expert --noauto

 

Ok, I see what the "XFdrake" command (via root) does but what does the other code (ie; "--expert --noauto") do?

[Guest ndeb]

The options "--expert --noauto" are optional. Try without them first.

[bvc]

Why try without them first :?: :roll: ..to leave room for error :roll: :roll:

 

those options simply mean that XFdrake will only do what you tell it to do, and give you all available options. Why would anyone want less? :roll:

[Guest greeneggs]

Why try without them first :?:  :roll: ..to leave room for error :roll:  :roll:  

 

those options simply mean that XFdrake will only do what you tell it to do, and give you all available options. Why would anyone want less? :roll:

 

I was just curous what they did, that was all. If I don't ask, I don't learn, yes? :roll:

[bvc]

If I don't ask, I don't learn, yes?

Yes, and no. You've used linux long enough to know that the first way to ask is;

 

--help

or

-h

or

-help

or

man

 

The second is google or other search engines.

 

Another is the info command, and yet another is the linux docs sitting on the hd.

 

Last resort is a forum where people donate their time freely trying to help others that have hopefully searched all other possible avenues for their answers.

 

Besides..."expert" and "noauto" are fairly obvious. :wink: I have a friend here in Houston that I met through the old board that's a gui kinda guy. At first he was timid about using the command line, and I understand this, but I'll tell you what I told him....tear it up!....gehead...tear it up! As long as your not overclocking or messing with custom modelines and monitor refresh rates, there's nothing you can do that either can't be undone or won't be fixed with a reinstall. I reinstalled ML8.1 about 3-5 times screwing stuff up and not wanting or knowing how to fix it, but now I usually can, if need be. If you type the command wrong you'll get an error, if you get in too deep you can kill the process. Now, he's digging through the fs and trying to sort out his own probs and find his own solutions and he's learning from it. It's be best way to learn....from your mistakes that is. You want to learn? Start digging through man pages, info pages, docs, and google, and try stuff you never thought you'd even consider trying. That's how you learn. Not by asking every single question on a forum that comes to mind.

[Guest greeneggs]

If I don't ask, I don't learn, yes?

Yes, and no. You've used linux long enough to know that the first way to ask is;

 

--help

or

-h

or

-help

or

man

 

The second is google or other search engines.

 

Another is the info command, and yet another is the linux docs sitting on the hd.

 

Last resort is a forum where people donate their time freely trying to help others that have hopefully searched all other possible avenues for their answers.

 

Besides..."expert" and "noauto" are fairly obvious. :wink: I have a friend here in Houston that I met through the old board that's a gui kinda guy. At first he was timid about using the command line, and I understand this, but I'll tell you what I told him....tear it up!....gehead...tear it up! As long as your not overclocking or messing with custom modelines and monitor refresh rates, there's nothing you can do that either can't be undone or won't be fixed with a reinstall. I reinstalled ML8.1 about 3-5 times screwing stuff up and not wanting or knowing how to fix it, but now I usually can, if need be. If you type the command wrong you'll get an error, if you get in too deep you can kill the process. Now, he's digging through the fs and trying to sort out his own probs and find his own solutions and he's learning from it. It's be best way to learn....from your mistakes that is. You want to learn? Start digging through man pages, info pages, docs, and google, and try stuff you never thought you'd even consider trying. That's how you learn. Not by asking every single question on a forum that comes to mind.

 

I agree with you bvc and I have spent endless hours online going through Google, Linux docs, other boards, etc. I'm pretty sure that I've only asked questions here that were either part of a follow-up from other questions or questions for which I was unable to find an answer.

 

I did'nt come here to talk about everyone's favorite pizza topping or other frivilous things that might pop into my head at various times during the day. You are giving me too much credit and assuming I know more that I actually do based on my revelation that I've been using Linux for about a year and 1/2. However, I've always been a casual user and prefer a GUI in all cases over an OS where a lot of command-line stuff has to be typed in.

 

If I wanted to use the command-line, I'd go back to DOS :wink:

[Guest diebels]

I used 9.1 for a couple of days. Suddenly X (Gnome) gets scrambled, and can't get to console. Use sysrq u,s,b. When rebooting get message about unclean shutdown, runs test. Test gives errors and choice of fixing (with warning). I choose to run fix. After fix, when loading rest of boot stuff, about 50 files are not existing. I Login and try to run startx, failes.

 

Reboot with the reboot command and gets message about unlean shutdown again! Try fixing again without luck.

 

Then I remember reading something about doing e2fsck is not smart on ext3 filesystems. So i reboot and run the test but not the fix.

 

Now everything seems ok.

[Guest ndeb]

I used 9.1 for a couple of days. Suddenly X (Gnome) gets scrambled, and can't get to console. Use sysrq u,s,b. When rebooting get message about unclean shutdown, runs test. Test gives errors and choice of fixing (with warning). I choose to run fix. After fix, when loading rest of boot stuff, about 50 files are not existing. I Login and try to run startx, failes.  

 

Reboot with the reboot command and gets message about unlean shutdown again! Try fixing again without luck.

Did u apply all the updates to system ? Are u using nvidia binary drivers ?

 

Then I remember reading something about doing e2fsck is not smart on ext3 filesystems.

It so happens that e2fsck is THE utility for checking ext2/ext3 filesystems. I wonder what else could have gone wrong.