another problem starting X with sarge-install
I did an install using the sarge install cd last night.
Initially I was working on a very small installation because of my plans
on setting up LVM.
I installed the minimum software necessary.
installed lvm10 using 'apt-get install lvm10'
set up lvm disks.
This went fine.
Then I ran TaskSel and selected only the X-Window-Server.
An interesting note to make here is that the installation and
configuration was extremely fast and simple. However, there was one
oddity in the X-Window-Server set-up that I didn't expect.
Initially there was an autodetect made of my hardware, including my
video card, all of which went fine. It completely recognized my video
card and the memory available on my Matrox G400. At what I expect was
the completion of the process, it started over again at the beginning
asking me about my Geniric Video Card and how much memory it had.
I assume this is an installation bug of the sarge-install process.
Installed and configured all of those packages and tested X.
X worked for both root and regular users.
I was able to login using xdm and get to a twm (default) desktop as root
and non-root users.
I then ran dselect, which selected a number of files by default.
I selected no other packages for installation except the package for
msft fonts and continued with the install.
After this completed, I rebooted (new kernel) and was able to start up
xdm (did not start automatically).
I could login using XDM to the WindowMaker desktop as root.
As a non-root user, my login failed and I was sent back to the XDM login
screen.
Something was introduced of the MANY packages that has severely broken
the X-Windows installation in a way that are a little difficult to debug
because there are so many and I'm unable to find any specific errors
that really have meaning.
In every case there was an error about not being able to find mga_hal
driver, but since it worked initially with this error I don't think it
really matters and the 'EE' statement in XFree86.0.log is superficial.
The only other 'EE' statement found was about a generic mouse
configuration. Again, removing that configuration option in
XF86Config-4 did nothing to fix the problem.
At this point I will retry installation of Debian using only -stable
packages to see if this can be set up correctly with those packages. I
used this exact hardware for 4 years with Debian on it and only recently
removed the installation. But now I'm unable to get back. ugh!
I'm not sure where to go next. But I've been running without a
workstation for almost two weeks and kind of need something.
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