[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Xfree86 problems



"Price, Erik" wrote:
> 
> > The problem
> > >
> > is that the entire top half of the screen shows up as black,
> > whereas the
> > bottom half of the screen looks cartoonishly big. The resolution must
> > somehow be getting set to some abominably low amount (the mouse cursor
> > itself is about an inch long in this mode). But KDE is starting up
> > because I see the KDE splash screen, and there is an
> > exaggeratedly large
> > toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Everything is so big
> > that, combined
> > with the absence of any content in the top half of my screen, I can't
> > really do anything or see anything. I just kill the X server with Ctrl
> > Alt Backspace and try again, but that's the best results I can get.
> > >
> > > Has anyone else ever had the entire top half of their monitor be
> > > black
> > like that? Note that I think that it must be a display
> > problem and not a
> > physical dead spot because if I move the mouse deep into the
> > black area,
> > it takes an equal amount of movement to pull it back down into view.
> > That is to say, the mouse *is* going somewhere, not just
> > hitting a wall.
> >
> >
> > It is pretty hard without much log data.
> 
> I brought in some floppy disks today (can you believe no one in my part of the building actually had any) and used them to transfer over some hopefully pertinent files.  Since I am unsure if this list accepts attachments, I have appended the data to the end of this email.
> 
> > What kind of video card is it?  If you are not sure, type
> > lspci and you should get some info about your pci bus
> > including a line
> > like (my video card)
> >
> > 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV5 [Riva TnT2]
> > (rev 11)
> 
> Here's the output from that command:
> 
> 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440GX - 82443GX Host bridge
> 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440GX - 82443GX AGP bridge
> 00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
> 00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
> 00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
> 00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
> 00:11.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905B 100BaseTX [Cyclone] (rev 24)
> 00:13.0 PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21152 (rev 03)
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Cirrus Logic GD 5430/40 [Alpine] (rev 47)
> 01:00.1 Display controller: Intergraph Corporation: Unknown device 0780 (rev 40)
> 02:0a.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U2/W / 7890
> 02:0e.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7880U (rev 01)
> 
> > You could also try this:
> >
> > apt-get install discover
> 
> After installation, this command, when used by itself, doesn't appear to do anything.  I played with it and took some guesses, and the output of `discover video` is:
> 
> Cirrus Logic GD543x GD 5430/40 [Alpine]
> 
> > apt-get install mdetect
> 
> This one is not on my CD-ROM.  I believe I could use apt-get to download it from the web but I am not sure what I need to do to configure it to look for packages on the web.
> 
> > XFree86 -configure
> 
> Now this one stumps me.  I tried this command, but I was told that an Xserver was already running (so it aborted).  So I used Alt-F7 to go over to the X display and tried to kill it with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, but every time I tried to do this it respawned.  I tried to kill every X-related process that appeared to be running, but I am not sure which one is causing the respawns.

xdm is running, which restarts X every time you log out.
Uninstall xdm, so X will now only start when you type startx.

Now do XFree86 -configure as root in /root which will generate
a config file you can test.



Reply to: