Please Help a stupid newbie!!!!

[staypuff28]

I bought Mandrake Linux 8.1 and I can't get to the user menu that the book talks about and shows pictures of. Does anyone have any ideas y. I have reinstalled 3 times already thinking it was an install problem but still nothing. Please Help someone?

 

[Crash893]

does it have a old or weird video card

that happend to me once

 

[staypuff28]

I have a Gainward Geforce2 64mb w/tv out, an Asus A7A266 mobo, a 1.4 Athlon Processor.

 

[Jeff Bolton]

explain your problem a little bit more please

so you installed fine, and you can boot up into mandrake? or you just get to a command line? or what? some more specifications would be nice

jeff

 

[staypuff28]

I get to a section that tells me what processor I have how much memory is installed and it asks me to login looks like a dos type atmosphere the login stuff works but it just leaves me there. I never get to the standard login here and pick your session type login sceen.

 

[Crash893]

yea thats what hapend to me i only did it once

i dont use it anymore

you have to manualy select your monitor/vid card i think

 

[staypuff28]

well can any one tell me how to do that?
I downloaded the video card drivers from nvidea but I have no clue how to install them.

 

[XWRed1]

Installation is covered in nvidia's readme.

 

[Jeff Bolton]

ok have you tried typing "start x" on the command line to see if you can even attempt to get into a GUI? try that first of all.

jeff

 

[David]

Log in as root and type startx *1* . Then it is likely that one of three things happen:

1) You get a desktop screen - your graphics card works fine, just a bit of fine tuning to make it boot into the GUI

2) A load of text scrolls by, the screen may flicker and you get a few error messages. If this happens, please post back here and look for lines in the text beginning (EE) . What do they say?
*3*

3) You get a 'command not found' message or similar - X is not installed and you will need to install it. This is unlikely, if you chose the default installation. *2*

Hope this helps, let us know what happens.

*1* no space between start and x
*2* the default install is advisable for newer linux users
*3* This info can also be found in /var/log/XFree86.log or similar but it is easier to read it from the screen.

Mandrake Users: What version of X comes with Mandrake 8.1? If it is 4.0.1 or greater (which I strongly suspect it is ) then installing nvidia drivers is no hassle. If it is version 4.1 or above it *should* be compatible with the GeForce Vcard.

 

[Jeff Bolton]

whoops, thanks for correcting my mistake penguin...i accidentally told him to put a space in "startx". my bad!

jeff

 

[David]

No problem

About the difficulties with linux - try kdm perhaps instead of startx - it will bring up a login screen.

 

[Jeff Bolton]

i used to have that problem, where i set the graphical login to come up, but instead it would still go to the text login. then i'd have to login as SU and type kdm to get to the graphical login. well, on my latest installation i made KDE my default desktop instead of gnome like before (even thought i don't use KDE) and the graphical login works beautifully. i even set it to automatically start up gnome. i'm so happy

jeff

 

[staypuff28]

alright off the get go it blinks alot then says
INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

When I type in the startx it gives me a lot of crap blinks once and the only "EE" says No devices detected

I swiped the video card out of my kids piece of crap(video card is a S3 Virge(4mb I think)) and it works just fine. Is it the drivers?

 

[David]

Mandrake has not set up the graphics card. Did you get an option to set it up during the install?

S3 Virge...I think that in XFree86 support for S3 cards has been removed.

Give me a couple of minutes and I'll have a look at the linux mandrake website.

 

[David]

Mandrake support the 'S3 Virge DX' Vcard.

It is classified as:

"Known Hardware.This hardware has been reported as compatible with Linux-Mandrake by someone in our community of users and developers. "

It should have been recognised.

 

[XWRed1]

S3 support was left out for the most part in XFree 4.x, but 4.2 brought back some of it.

Mandrake will probably have him using the framebuffer driver, which will work, but be slow.

 

[staypuff28]

The S3 works just fine. I loaded X 3.something instead of the 4.1 one this card. But I would really like to go back to my Geforce 2 the video is just so much better on that one but that of course is obvious. Is it possible to change video cards without having to reinstall the OS. Thanks

 

[staypuff28]

Mandrake Users: What version of X comes with Mandrake 8.1? If it is 4.0.1 or greater (which I strongly suspect it is ) then installing nvidia drivers is no hassle. If it is version 4.1 or above it *should* be compatible with the GeForce Vcard. [/B][/QUOTE]


It has X 4.1.0 and X 3.3.6

 

[XWRed1]

You can't do 3D acceleration on the 3.3.x series of X with an Nvidia card. I know Mandrake 8.0 gave you the choice between 3.3.x and 4.x, but I think the later Mandrakes stick you with 4.x.

Even so, it doesn't take an OS reinstall to change versions. Just shuffle around some rpms.