Re: no xserver

[Seneca <seneca-cunningham@rogers.com>]

[please don't quote the entire digest at the end of your message]

On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 08:49:18AM -0800, anthony baldwin wrote:
> I installed woody for the first time yetserday on a frankenstein box I
> made outta spare parts (It has run redhat).
> I had several issues, starts and restarts, but I finally got through
> the entire install and rebooted...and the xserver wouldn't start...

  1) Have you installed X?
       If no, install X (apt-get install x-window-system-core).
       If yes, proceed to step 2.
  2) Does X start when you issue the command startx from the command line?
       If no, install xbase-clients.
       If yes, but with errors, read /var/log/XFree86.0.log and
         reconfigure and/or install new packages as necessary.
       If yes with no errors, proceed to step 3.
  3) Do you have a window manager installed (X will exit shortly after
     starting with no window manager installed)?
       If no, install a window manager.
       If yes, proceed to step 4.
  4) Do you have a display manager installed?
       If no, install a display manager (xdm, gdm, kdm, or wdm)
       If yes, what errors are occurring?

> This is a bit frustrating, I must say.  It certainly doesn;t take me
> all weekend to install Red Hat.  Of course, I know that Debian is not
> trying to make money, just build great FREE software, and I respect
> that.  I have an old monitor that someon was throwing away (can't
> handle more than 800x600 at 60, and 256 colors, even).  The video is
> onboard the mobo, an MSI G11-CB00056 Any ideas?  As exasperating as
> your install is, I totally dig the true spirit of freedom and
> community that Debian appears to embody.

I'm not sure about which video driver to use, but generic vga should
work.  If you plan on spending a lot of time in X, I would suggest that
you get another monitor.  While its true that you can do X with that
(and although I've used 640x480, 16 colours, before, X is much nicer to
look at with a few more pixels and colours).  Since you said that the
system has run Red Hat, do you have a copy of your old X config that you
could look at?

> For reference, I have only about 10 months experience using Linux all
> together.  I have installed and used several RedHats (7.0-8.0),
> Corel(debian based, right? but has a graphical install that is much
> easier to follow), Blue Linux, and Lycoris.

I've always had problems with graphical installers.  They tend not to
like my systems (all except one are at least seven years old, the newest
one does not have a (physically) working cdrom).  It might help if I had
newer hardware or a mouse with a working left mouse button (when I use
X, I use a two-button mouse that only the right mouse button works on),
but I like the console, so it doesn't matter too much to me.

-- 
Seneca
seneca-cunningham@rogers.com