X problems

[LorKorub]

If you have a huge resolution (I.E. you can scroll the mouse off of the desktop to see the rest of the screen) you probably answered yes to 'Virtual Desktop.' Run the config  program again, and answer no to that question.

[Maniaman]

I can now load X. But I'm still having problems. I still have the huge resolution and virtual desktop is not enabled. I did manage to change the resolution from 800x600 to 1024x786. That didn't change the sizes of anything. It only screwed up my colors... I figure I'll run xf86cfg again. Any way to kill X and get back to the command line? ctrl+alt+backspace restarts X...

[Ice-9]

Ctrl+Alt+F1, to get back to X use Ctrl+Alt+F7.

[Maniaman]

Thats just sticking me at a Blank Screen...

[psyjax]

Yet again, I'm glad I use OSX      

sorry, had to say it. I'll shut up now.

EDIT:

On a related problem, my RedHat 8 box is apperantly out of commision, When my bro. attached a new monitor to it, X threw him into a hardware configuration App. in which he entered the wrong monitor type. Now X wont start at all, and there is seemingly no way to access the .conf file. Just a blank screen.

Any ideas?

[ January 17, 2003: Message edited by: psyjax: plain 'ol psyjax ]

[LorKorub]

You can use Ctrl+Alt+F1-F6 to get a virtual terminal. Ctrl+Alt+F7 (otherwise known as tty07) is the terminal reserved for X.

Why you have a blank screen on tty01 is beyond me. You might have to adjust your default run levels in /etc/inittab. Make sure your default run-level is at 5 (multiuser level.) That way, you will have virtual terminals where you can screw around with the X config file, and not have to reboot everytime.  

You still haven't told us what kind of card you are using.  Some cards are not supported under X, and you have to manually load drivers. I had to do this on a friend's machine that was using some Trio 3D piece of shit.

[choasforages]

actally, it depends on the init config which terminal XFree86 is on. i know on some of the BSD's i have used, it was ctrl + alt + f5. as for the resolution, it automatically using the highest resolution it can. i don't know howto setup a default resolution lower then the highest one avialable.

[beltorak0]

When the computer boots with X, the "/etc/inittab" file should reserve one tty for the console (for just these situations).  In slackware it's tty06 ([Ctrl] [Alt] [F6]); in red hat it might be 5.  try them all.  X Windows opens itself on 7 when run (at least in linux), probably because it's the next number availible.

Now for X itself.  Have you tried to set the card driver to "unsupported VESA"?  it might at least be usable.  If on the other hand what you have is usable (except for the fact that the default res is too low), then there are several lines that need to be dealt with in XF86Config;

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The important lines are "DefaultDepth", which for me is set to 24 (as in bits-per-pixel).  So, under the appropriate SubSection "Display" you can see the default modes associated with it.  The first mode listed is the default.  They should be a reference to another section of the file: Section "Monitor".  It should have a listing for each mode you defined during the config setup, but especially the one you use most.

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For referencing, the name has to be the same one referenced inside the screen section: (quoted again for clarity)

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hope this helps;


just FYI, the relavent lines at the bottom of "/etc/inittab" (for slackware) are

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It is saying that consoles 1-5 are open for runlevels 1,2,3, and 5, but only console 6 is open for 1,2,3,4, and 5.  slackware uses runlevel 4 for booting into X... redhat uses 5 (or is that 3?), so adjust accordingly.

[ January 17, 2003: Message edited by: beltorak ]

[ January 17, 2003: Message edited by: beltorak ]

[Maniaman]

X workd for the most part now. I'm still stuck with KDE and command prompt login. When I try to open /etc/inittab it tells me Permission Denied (I'm logged in as root) I could just reboot and fix it but I dont want to loose my uptime  

[beltorak0]

so what are the perms on that file: "ls -l /etc/inittab"?  it's odd that you don't have any perms on it as root....

as for the default wm -- check your home directory.  there should be a file: ".xinitrc".  That is the control script that runs when you "startx".  It might be a symlink, in which case it should point to one of the scripts in "/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.$wm".  If you want to save it, move it to something like ".old.xinitrc" and do "ln -s /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.gnome .xinitrc" to set your default wm to gnome.  It should take effect when you "startx".

when you get your write perms back to /etc/inittab you can make the changes necessary to kick you into runlevel 5 upon boot.  failing that, this can be used as an ugly workaround:

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Save this as "/etc/init.d/rc3.d/S99telinit5", and don't forget to "chmod ug+x S99telinit5".

and HEED the warning in the header.  For most boot loaders you can pass the "single" option to the kernel at boot time to boot into runlevel 1 -- it might be wise to try this out first....

Also, since i don't have a SysV type setup, i might be wrong about that "/etc/init.d/" directory.  It might be "/etc/rc.d".

have fun

[Maniaman]

It says root was -rw-r--r-- rights to /etc/inittab

According to bash .xinitrc doesn't exist in any of the mone directories...