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No GUI, only Bash shell on Mandrake boot up.

H

Hanzou

Senior member
Ok, well i installed Mandrake 9.2 and all of it went good. Now on bootup, when i get to the boot loader, i have 4 Linux choises: Linux-enterpris, Linux, Linux-nonfb, Linux-smp. No matter which one I chhose, all i get is the user login, and then the bash shell, no gui desktop, nothing. So ummm, what the hell did I do wrong?
 
Maybe nothing.

X needs to be set up correctly in order for it to run.

Try a few commands.

startx

see if that starts X.

If it fails (it should, since it doesn't start up.) it will put out a error. That error will be on a line beginning with EE. (pretty sure)

If it goes by to fast, then usually it's stored in a log file in your /var/log directory. Usually named something like XFree86.log.0 or something like that.

There are some variations between distros, so I can't be absolutely sure about the log names, since I don't use Mandrake.

You can use "cd" command to change directories.


easy command to read log files:
cat /var/log/XFree86.log.0 | less
| = pipe symbol, not l or 1


The configuration that is used for X will be indicated in the beginning of the log file. Usually /etc/X11/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.

Once you look at the error, make a backup of the config file
cp /etc/X11/XF86Config ~/Xconfig.backup

just to be safe. 😉

Now try to make a new configuration file. There are a few ways to do it but the easiest is:
cd ~/ (to make sure that you are in your home file.)
XFree86 -configure

Then after your done, copy the new configure file to the correct location. (same place/name as the original configuration file)

That should at least get X started for you.


 
What I'm wondering is why X appears not to have been set up correctly. When I installed it the other day (it's gone now, in favor of Gentoo), it was automatically installed and configured to the resolution I intended. Mandrake has always been good about this.. perhaps you didn't specify a desktop environment or window manager to be installed, and XFree86 wasn't installed from the CD? Hard to say without having been there with you as you did the install. Do you have an unusual video card?

Try drag's method; even if the resolution isn't what you want, once you're in X you can change the resolution easily via a Mandrake graphical tool.

Look on the bright side... you're making progress! 🙂
 
I installed KDE and I even set it so thatKDE would auto load on startup.

edit: I checke the XFree file and it is saying that it cannot find My 9600Pro. Int he installation it detects it, lets me configure it saying that it is an ATI chipset. what can i do now? anything?
 
I am not sure what to do next. It may help to know what exactly was the error... (and make sure that you get all the errors, sometimes one gets overlooked in the middle of the log file or something.)

 
I went threought the whole file and I know what the error is all about. i have a Radeon 9600Pro, and it does not have drivers for it. It has drivers for the 9500 and 9700 but no the 9600. So whenit can't find the drivers for it, it says that there is no video card installed. What do i do? Considering this is 9.2, you would think they would have support for an a 6 month old card.
 
Download the 9600 drivers from ATI's site.
A distro can only support a card that it knows of and has had decent support for in the past. This is obviously not the case with the Radeons, and ATI has made some rather half-assed drivers for linux (according to people I know with linux and radeon 9x00s).
 
guess i will ahve to download iand install these new drivers, thanks for the help! Wonder if I can trick it nto thinking my 9600 is a 9500 as they are very close to the same, hmmm....
 
rage128 Rage128 xfree DRI
r100 Radeon7xxx, Radeon64 xfree DRI
r200,r250 Radeon8500, Radeon9000 xfree DRI, ATI DRI
r300, following Radeon9500, Radeon9800 xfree 2D, ATI DRI


That's from a Gentoo website and explains the drivers and what models they support.

here is the DRI project website. They do the open sourced accelerated drivers that work on some ATI cards.

They probably have some information about your card.


Also another thing that may help would be to install a text browser if you don't already use on. The 2 most common are Lynx and Links. Lynx is a classic, but Links supports frames and javascripting. That way you don't have to dual boot to look up stuff on google and to download stuff.
 
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