XFree86 display problems
When I boot into Debian, it tries to start a desktop (I believe I have
it set to gdm), but the screen just flashes a few times and then gives
me an error message and tells me to look at /var/log/XFree86.0.log. I
tried using startx to no avail (it exhibited similar behavior - the
screen just flashed and went back to the text bash shell). I think
there may be a problem with my video card and/or detection of it. In
/var/log/XFree86.0.log, a line towards the very end states that "Primary
Device is: PCI 01:00:0 (EE) No devices detected" - which seems kind of
odd, since my card uses an AGP slot (GeForce 4 Ti4600).
I searched the mailing list archives (not exhaustively, but for a while)
and I came across a discussion regarding someone who was having similar
problems and I tried several of the solutions offered, namely:
make xconfig
XFree86 -configure
xhost +localhost
xhost +debian
export DISPLAY=localhost:0 # and also with DISPLAY=:0
apt-get install discover mdetect read-edid
dpkg -P --force-depends xserver-xfree86 xfree86
apt-get install xserver-xfree86 xfree86-common
None of them worked.
That last set of three lines presumably replaced the existing XFree86
with the one on the CDs, though I was hoping it would download a newer
version, as this one seems rather old (v. 4.1.0.1 I believe, dated 21
December 2001). Would this be a possible solution, i.e., downloading a
newer version?
I also noticed at one point (I believe it was when I executed the
XFree86 -configure) that I received an error message telling me a proper
configuration was detected, but the data was missing from some header file.
Thanks for the help,
Chad
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