Ubuntu desktop problem

[Apocalypse23]

Hey guys, hoping I can get some help here. After spending a fair amount of time trying to install Ubuntu on my second hard drive (complete linux newbie here) I finally got it to boot properly, but now I'm facing this very weird problem. Okay so I get to the login screen, type my user/pw, everything is fine. But once it loads into the desktop, I can't see anything except a brown background and a rectangular white box with distorted lines and artifacts. I can move my mouse fine, but theres nothing to click on. All I see is this box with visual artifacts and lines in it.

Here is my setup.
I have three HDDs, my main SATA 200gb maxtor(WinXP), a 160gb IDE maxtor drive (master) and an 80gb IDE maxtor drive (slave). When I installed Ubuntu, I choose to install it on my 80gb, and when the GRUB MBR thing came up, I choose 'no' and installed it into /dev/hdb1.
At my bootup screen I got some 'unable to mount on partition' error, but I fixed it by pressing 'e' and editing 'hd1,0' to 'hd0,0'. Don't know if this has anything to do with it.

Any help would be appreciated, I really want to see what Ubuntu is all about =) . Thanks all.

 

[phisrow]

Hmm, sounds like it might be a misconfigured desktop resolution. I've not run into the problem myself; but I've heard reports of it not autodetecting that properly. What manner of monitor are you working with?

 

[nweaver]

ctrl-alt-F2 to get to a shell

login, and type "sudo xorgconfig" (think that's the right one) and get a new xorg.conf file. Backup your old one prior to making the new one (and look through it for mouse and stuff). /etc/X11/xorg.conf

 

[Apocalypse23]

That didn't exactly work, after typing sudo xorgconfig, I got some invalid command error (or something of that nature).

phisrow: That's what i've heard as well, but apart from the fact that i'm completely new to ubuntu, I really can't figure out how to do anything at all in it's current state. I'm using a crappy Samtron 75V monitor and an eVGA 7800GT vid card.

 

[nweaver]

type xorg[tab tab] to have it show you what xorg files there are, one will be xorgconfig or xorg-config or something like that. Run that as sudo

 

[Apocalypse23]

Originally posted by: nweaver
type xorg[tab tab] to have it show you what xorg files there are, one will be xorgconfig or xorg-config or something like that. Run that as sudo

Okay, I tried that but nothing happened. Pressing tab just made the computer beep but nothing showed. Trying it with XO alone didn't work, but when I did it with X I saw 108 files, none of them starting with xorg. I do see a xorg.conf file in /etc/x11/ though.

 

[drag]

xorg-conf or whatnot may not be present on Ubuntu. I don't know.'

In debian (and I am guessing Ubuntu since they are similar) what you'd want to do is:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

And that will get you to the point were you can reconfigure the xserver manually.

The configuration is stored in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and if you want you can manually edit it. I prefer to do it that way since I am familar with it's syntax. Before editing it either with the dpkg command or manually be sure to make a backup copy of the file. That way if you make a mistake or a change makes it worse then you can copy it back over the new file and get all your settings back.

See if that does the trick. Maybe it's just that it guessed the wrong refresh rates for your monitor or something.

edit:
To reset your x server to get the changes you need to restart it to make the changes go into effect.

There are two ways:
to go
ctrl-alt-backspace
while in X and that will kill it. Sometimes it will restart, but after enough tries it will give up.

The other way is to go:
/etc/init.d/gdm restart

And that will kill it and restart it. To stop it you'd go:
/etc/init.d/gdm stop

This is all stuff kinda specific to Ubuntu and Debian. Different distros will have variations on what to do with it.

For instance to stop X server in Fedora and most other RPM-using distros you'd go:
telinit 3

Which exists in Debian, but running that command will have a different effect.


edit2:

Generally in Linux you have various 'virtual consoles' were you can switch to and log into a command line enviroment without using X windows.
To switch between all these you hit:
control-alt-F#
Were the F# is one of the f-buttons.
So to go to the first virtual console you can go:
ctrl-alt-F1
and log in through that.

Usually F1 through F6 are console logins.

X windows is generally ctrl-alt-F7. Although it can vary.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Originally posted by: drag
xorg-conf or whatnot may not be present on Ubuntu. I don't know.'

In debian (and I am guessing Ubuntu since they are similar) what you'd want to do is:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

And that will get you to the point were you can reconfigure the xserver manually.

The configuration is stored in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and if you want you can manually edit it. I prefer to do it that way since I am familar with it's syntax. Before editing it either with the dpkg command or manually be sure to make a backup copy of the file. That way if you make a mistake or a change makes it worse then you can copy it back over the new file and get all your settings back.

See if that does the trick. Maybe it's just that it guessed the wrong refresh rates for your monitor or something.

edit:
To reset your x server to get the changes you need to restart it to make the changes go into effect.

There are two ways:
to go
ctrl-alt-backspace
while in X and that will kill it. Sometimes it will restart, but after enough tries it will give up.

The other way is to go:
/etc/init.d/gdm restart

And that will kill it and restart it. To stop it you'd go:
/etc/init.d/gdm stop

This is all stuff kinda specific to Ubuntu and Debian. Different distros will have variations on what to do with it.

For instance to stop X server in Fedora and most other RPM-using distros you'd go:
telinit 3

Which exists in Debian, but running that command will have a different effect.


edit2:

Generally in Linux you have various 'virtual consoles' were you can switch to and log into a command line enviroment without using X windows.
To switch between all these you hit:
control-alt-F#
Were the F# is one of the f-buttons.
So to go to the first virtual console you can go:
ctrl-alt-F1
and log in through that.

Usually F1 through F6 are console logins.

X windows is generally ctrl-alt-F7. Although it can vary.

Thanks for your response. I still can't seem to get rid of this problem; I went through the configuration steps and manually set my resolutions and refresh rates but pretty much left everything else to default. Don't know what's goin on, maybe I need to install video drivers or something? Anything else you can reccomend? Thanks.

 

[drag]

It could be your monitor, I think. Does it have a automatic adjustment feature? Try that out and see if you can make it look sane. Maybe it's getting a slightly different refresh rate then what you get in Windows and that is making it be weird.

Otherwise the drivers provided by the default install should work ok.

These are the 'nv' drivers and should include support for most of nvidia video cards.

You can try using the most generic drivers which are 'vesa', which should use most video cards 'compatability mode' for it to work.

Nvidia provides propriatory drivers that give 3d acceleration and such. You can try those.

The easiest way to try it is to use a program called 'module-assistant'. This helps you download and compile modules for your system. However I don't like using the nvidia binaries provided by Ubuntu and such because they seem to be out of date.

So I prefer to manually compile and install Nvidia's drivers myself. Note that after you do a big update to X or install a updated kernel you will have to reinstall the driver time to time.

I don't mind that so much because then I just upgrade the driver to the latest version.

I order to build and install the nvidia drivers you need to have your kernel headers isntalled for your current kernel.

I am not 100% on this, but try switching to a virtual console (ctrl-alt-f1):
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
(just to make sure everything is up to date)

sudo apt-get install module-assistant
sudo module-assistant prepare
(or just run module assistant without a command and select 'prepare' option)

Then that should download and install the kernel header package and everything you need to build modules.
wget http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linu...178/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run
(or go to the website and get the latest version.. links or links2 is a nice text based browser)
chmod +x NVIDIA*
sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run

And that should install them.

Be sure to read the readme and such from Nvidia's website.

They also provide utilities now to update your xorg configuration and some other items. If you want you can manually edit the xorg configation and change 'Driver "nv"' to 'Driver "nvidia"' in your video card section of that file. That's all that should be need to be done.

Hope that helps.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Originally posted by: drag

sudo apt-get install module-assistant
sudo module-assistant prepare

Those didn't work for me for some reason. Just gave me one of those invalid command/file not found errors. I continued anyway and when I ran the driver installation program, i got an error about not having binutils installed. I tried booting ubuntu anyway and it didn't work. Clicking on the session button and selecting anything other than 'last' causes it to freeze and show artifacts again. The mouse still moves though =P

 

[drag]

Ah, sorry. The module-assistant isn't part of the official Ubuntu distribution. To install it you'd have to have 'universe' enabled in your apt-get configuration. The configuration for that is located in /etc/apt/sources.list. I suppose you don't want to deal with that just yet though. (they should include it by default.. it's very usefull)

Try this:
sudo apt-get install linux-kernel-headers

And that should install the headers package, I don't know if it will give you everything you need though.

if during the install it has suggested and/or recommended packages. Install a few of those that seem important. That should help get everything you need.

Then go on and try the Nvidia driver install script again.

 

[Apocalypse23]

Originally posted by: drag
Ah, sorry. The module-assistant isn't part of the official Ubuntu distribution. To install it you'd have to have 'universe' enabled in your apt-get configuration. The configuration for that is located in /etc/apt/sources.list. I suppose you don't want to deal with that just yet though. (they should include it by default.. it's very usefull)

Try this:
sudo apt-get install linux-kernel-headers

And that should install the headers package, I don't know if it will give you everything you need though.

if during the install it has suggested and/or recommended packages. Install a few of those that seem important. That should help get everything you need.

Then go on and try the Nvidia driver install script again.

Alright, tried that and I got something about how I should check if CC is in my path and if it's a legit driver or something, I just choose to go ahead anyway but the driver install then gave me an error saying something about GCC not installed. So I just tried apt-get install gcc and that seemed to work. Then it gave me an error about something else, did the same thing and got past that. But now I'm getting an error about LIBC HEADER, about how I don't have it and need to download it. I'm stuck at this point. I hope going through all this eventually fixes my problem. Thanks.

 

[drag]

Well dammit. This shouldn't be so annoying.

I don't know if installing the nvidia propriatory drivers will fix your problem. There is a decent chance it may, but I am not sure what is going wrong with your system to cause the artifacts on your lcd monitor.

This is why Ubuntu is irritating for being so GUI-centric and why Nvidia sucks for providing propriatory-only drivers.

Had similar issues a while back with somebody that was having trouble with their sound card. In Debian it would of been a peice of cake to run alsaconf command and get their ISA sound card working.. but noooo Ubuntu had to get rid of it for some absurd reason and just assumed that there was no reason for it's existance in the first place. (since they didn't make a replacement)

Irritating.

Alright. I figure to try to do the module-assistant thing again.

If you want to try it you need to edit your apt-get configuration to enable universe repository for Ubuntu. This allows easy access a much broader range of software You'd eventually do it anyways since the list of officially supported software for Ubuntu is fairly limited.

To do that you need to edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file and uncomment some lines.
each line that begins with a # is a comment. That it that it's ignored by the programs that use this file.

You can find a sample configuration of what I think Ubuntu's sources.list file looks like here:
http://buhsnarf.net/wordpress/techie/ubuntu-sourceslist/

The only difference is that it's had all of it's sources enabled by removing the # in the beginning of the lines.

So find the lines that contain the configuration information for universe. Uncomment those and then run
sudo apt-get update
then
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

This will make it up to date and enable access to the new repositories of software.

now try:
sudo apt-get install module-assistant
sudo module-assistant prepare

and then do the nvidia install thing. Make sure that it installs build-essentials


edit:

try using 'nano' for a text editor.

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
To save your file hit ctrl-x and hit 'y' when it asks you if you want to save the changes to the buffer.

 

[PinmasterJay]

I am experiencing the exact same problems, I too have a eVGA Geforce 7800GT vid card,
but my monitor is different, Viewsonic VX924 LCD

I was wondering if there might be a difference between the 64 bit and 32 bit versions,
so tomorrow i'm going to try the 32 bit one instead