|
I have installed the Debian Linux base OS on my
IBM Valuepoint 425SX by downloading files from the Debian site and putting them
on floppies (there's no CD drive on the Valuepoint.) Everything went fine. Linux
boots and I have been able to download and install numerous packages (man pages
etc.) using dselect. My problem is that X-windows doesn't want to run. I
installed all the required packages for this, though in no particular order, and
let the dselect configuration utility tell me what was missing. In the fullness
of time, it stopped asking for any more modules; the ones I clearly remember
were xdm, cpp, fvwm95-2, svga-server and xbase. I'm sure there were others. Only
Xbase gave me trouble owing to its size. I had to pkzip it and decompress it
into a dos partition, mount that, and copy it to a directory structure mirroring
the Debian site. In the end, though, it installed fine and took me through a
configuration process where I was asked to choose between xdm and xstart as
methods for starting X-windows. I chose xdm.
Now when I type "xdm" and hit enter,
the prompt just returns. I have seen various faq references suggesting that the
F7 virtual console might have my X-windows running, but when I Alt-F7 I just see
a blinking cursor.
I don't really mind doing this all over if it's
at all likely to work. I want to change the way I partitioned the drive anyway.
I just wonder whether there is some incompatibility in the video that prevents
it from working. This is a 1992 era Valuepoint with a Tseng 4000 chip and one
megabyte of video memory all on the motherboard. It seems like a svga-class
setup so it was the svga Xserver package I installed along with the other
stuff.
Any thoughts or comments much
appreciated.
Thanks,
Dale Pierce
(pierced@enteract.com)
|