Re: wtf? (long and frustrated)
Glenn English <ghe@slsware.com> writes:
> There ought to be a list for debian wannabes. I've tried several times
> to get woody going on a couple different boxen - most recently a Dell
> Latitude laptop.
You said Latitude C500/600? Mine (a Latitude C600) has a very
nonstandard 1400x1050 display.
> Console is fine; X, of course, has been the problem (I haven't even
> looked at the PCMCIA Ethernet and wireless cards yet).
PCMCIA has worked just fine for me; some minor issues with the
internal wireless card, but current versions of the kernel PCMCIA
drivers work well.
> When the installer says, "Have fun," and reboots, the screen blinks a
> couple times, and a curses dialog box comes up saying it can't run X,
> telling me why, and offering to run the X configuration program - that's
> cool. I say, "Yes," and a program starts - IN X!!!
>
> This is not funny, folks; it's sadistic.
Uh, how are you configuring the X server? You might try, in no
particular order:
-- Removing or disabling xdm/kdm/gdm so it doesn't try to go into X on
startup;
-- Reading the logs ('startx -- -verbose >xlog 2>&1' can be
informative, dumps a lot of data in xlog);
-- Running 'XFree86 -configure' to cause X to give you what it thinks
is a sensible configuration file in ./XF86Config.new.
*reads /etc/X11/XF86Config-4* ...it appears that the version of X in
unstable actually understands the 1400x1050 display by default; I
don't have to do anything special for this to be recognized or run in
its default resolution. So you also might try digging up an XFree86
4.2 backport, if you're using stable.
> The mouse doesn't work, but there's a window telling which keys on the
> numeric keypad to use instead. Laptops don't have numeric keypads, and
> the system knows this is a laptop (I installed "Support for Dell
> laptops" and I saw something flash by while it was booting).
Hold down the "Fn" key, and the jkluio789 keys will act as a keypad.
> When I pressed ctl-alt-backspace, the screen slowly faded to white.
I've seen that before. From what I can tell it doesn't actually hurt
the display, but it is hard to get back to a useful display mode.
> I've installed Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE on this machine with no
> probs. I've used video and screen data from the XF86 config files from
> those installs, and from Dell's dox.
Huh. I'd think that'd be likely to work, then...weird.
> Is there some FM or FAQ I've missed? Is there a CI program on Debian to
> configure X? Or is vi /etc/X11/XF86Config it?
Other people have mentioned using dpkg-reconfigure to update the
XF86Config file too.
BTW, there's also a debian-laptop list, you might try asking there for
help...
--
David Maze dmaze@debian.org http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell
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