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OT - Need Help from Linux Guru's

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Drakkhen

Senior member
Well, I have been trying to get one of my home machines up with OpenLinux eServer 2.3. I get it installed just fine, but, when I go to get my video card setup so I can use more than 640x480, I just can'g get it done. I have installed XFree86 4.0.1 but, still can't get it to work properly (BTW, card is a GeForce).

Any suggestions?
 
If x-windows works (starts up in 640x480) then there are two possibilities.

I'm assuming you know how to switch resolutions? ctrl-alt-+ to increase and ctrl-alt-- to decrease?

Maybe you haven't assigned the right driver to the Geforce card so it is running a generic VGA/SVGA driver? xf86setup (graphical) and configxf86 (text based) are two programs to try.

Michael
 
Well, the only driver that I can get it to work with is the generic VGA one. There is one listed for a NVIDIA GeForce, but it doesn't work worth a flip. I dare say this is the one thing with Linux that has kept me away from it for so long.

Thanks.
 
It could be that you have the wrong monitor device configured and/or have its refresh rates wrong or something... It may not be the video card. What monitor do you have?

Yeah X is often a bitch to get working but things have improved alot, even in the past year....

You also might want to do a search for places that offer XF86Config files in a database. These are populated by people who have donated copies of their config files for others to try...
 
Have you searched nvidia's site for a newer driver? I know they've updated a few things for xfree4.0

Michael
 
Something that you might try if you can't get the GeForce working with its driver, and you don't like the VGA16 driver (can't blame you for that 😉 ) is to use the FBDev server. This would require 3 things, (1) use a kernel with framebuffer support (the vesa 2.0 driver would be the best for you), (2) enable the frame buffer support (I append "video=vesa:mtrr,ywrap" and set "vga=791" in my lilo.conf file), and (3) setup your XF86Config and Xserver files to use the FBDev server. The "vga=791" in your lilo.conf file would set your frame buffer to 1024x768@16bit.

Debian has an example XF86Config file to use for the framebuffer device included along with the FBDev server's documentation, so I would guess that your distribution probably would too. The only thing that you would probably need to change in it would be the mouse configuration.

What ever you decide to do, good luck. 🙂
 
Well, let me shoot this one by everyone. I installed the new 4.0.1 XFree86 and if I do a startx to bring up Xwindows, it works. If I type KDE to bring up that environment, it is all messed up. Any thoughts?
 
Weird. when I "startx" it brings up GNOME or KDE (depending on what computer, I prefer GNOME). X windows actually isn't anything, without a windows manager nothing will happen. Can you tell me what windows manager you're using? Maybe it doesn't work with KDE.

Michael
 
Usually there's a symbolic link somewhere that points the "startx" script to the "startkde" script or vice versa (for some distros) if you're going to be running KDE. These are located in /usr/X11/bin. It could be that your "kde" script (perhaps equivalent to startkde) is not symbolically linked to something pointing to the correct XServer, eg., the XF86_SVGA server or whatever, because that server never got installed (I had that happen with Red Hat - it forgot to install the X server I needed)! There's also an issue that sometimes comes up with the .xinitrc file in your account's home directory that points to a specific window manager and that being confused.

It's a shame that I'm not familiar with how the newer Caldera does their X configs (I have the older 1.3 version). In 1.3, there's a sym link to an /opt directory (opt is a SuSE-ism) where KDE configs are located... ie., /opt/kde. The "kde" script basically does the starting up of X, looking for further config files in the user's /home directory.

When the install goes right, all of this is transparent, but when it doesn't.... sigh.... 🙁
 
Well, I am not exactly sure how I got it to work, but needless to say it is working now. Thanks for all of your help. This is my first experience with Linux, but, I hope it will prove to be a good experience overall!

Thanks again!

 
Oh good! Believe me... I've had the same thing happen - it suddenly works and you don't know how or why but it does...

Glad to see you willing to give Linux a shot though and be willing to stick with it!

😀
 
Well, the reason that I am going through all of this trouble is that I would like to host everything that I want to have on the web from home. I just received the OpenLinux eServer 2.3 from Caldera the other day, and it provides web, mail, ftp, etc. in one nice little installation package.

So, as long as I can muddle my way through getting it all configured correctly, it will definitely be a good thing.

Now, I just have to learn how to add users to the SMTP server and such, and I will be good to go.
 
I've seen that package at CompUSA and was kindof fascinated by it. Good luck and keep us informed on how it goes! 🙂
 
Well, it just arrived at work from a user group that I belong to, so I thought that I might as well give it a try. Nothing like free 🙂

 
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