Re: xfree on Redhat 8

Eric Scott wrote:

>   I have an ASUS motherboard with a built in Geforce 2 graphics system.
>The redhat 8.0 installer hangs on monitor probing.  No problem, I just did
>"linux text skipddc" and the installer lads fine.  But then the installer
>hangs on the xfree setup... or rather, it hangs when I try to test the xfree
>setup. The screen goes black, which would be expected with a bad monitor
>configuration. (I selected the exact model)  But it never comes back.  I can
>leave it for an hour to no avail.  So I skip xfree setup in the install, and
>I can boot into the terminal via boot floppy (I prefer to use the mandrake
>boot loader, and I can't figure out how to load redhat from it.
>
> Any clues on how to get xfree working from here?
>I'm super-newbie to Linux, and have just been playing around with Mandrake,
>Redhat, and Yellow Dog for about a year now.  So be very detailed in your
>response;
>Thanx a million,
>   ES
>
>
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>  
>
Ok, fist question first. Boot-loaders are like simple magic tricks: they 
look very impressive if you don't know how it's done, but once you know 
the secret, it's so simple it seems almost silly. I've never worked with 
Mandrake, but I've tinkered with a gaggle of other OS's boot-loaders and 
they all want two or three basic things:
1. On what partition is the OS stored?
2. What is the name of the secondary boot-loader, or OS kernel?
   and optionally...
3. What additional arguments does the boot-loader/kernel need?

On RedHat this looks like this:
# what's the drive/partition where the OS lives?
        root (hd0,0) # this is an alias for /dev/hda1
# what's the name/location of the 2nd boot-loader/kernel (and what args 
does it need)?
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-27.9 ro root=LABEL=/ hdb=ide-scsi
# initrd is a special argument for the RedHat-ish kernels...
        initrd /initrd-2.4.20-27.9.img

   Unless they're doing some REAL magic, Mandrake must, by definition of 
the problem (booting an OS loader on a PC-compatible architecture), be 
doing something very similar. You need to find out what boot-loader 
Mandrake uses and do a little research, then find a way to translate 
your equivalent information to what I described above into something 
Mandrake's boot-loader can use.

   Now, the more important question. If the XFree86 rpms are installed 
(do "rpm -q -a | grep -i xfree86"; if you get an answer they're probably 
all there), all you need to do it create a config file.  If they're not, 
you have to find which CD they're on and manually install them using 
"rpm -ivh /<path-to-cd>/RedHat/RPMS/XFree86*.rpm".
   Once the XFre86 rpms are installed, you've got a command prompt, the 
output of "lspci" and the specs for your monitor in hand, just type 
"xf86config". Carefully read and answer all the questions, and at the 
end you should have a functional config located in 
"/etc/X11/XF86config". You can do this as many times as you like, but 
remember to save a working (even if only a little) XF86Config before 
running xf86config again, as it will overwrite it.
  Start out with conservative answers, such as "I have a brain-dead, 
vanilla video card, and a monitor my mother gave me ten years ago", 
which translates to using "vesa" as your video card, and choosing the 
first item on both lists when prompted for the horizontal and vertical 
refresh rates. Then, run "startx" and sit back and watch. If you can get 
it going in vesa mode, chances are you'll eventually get it working with 
the accelerated driver written specifically for your chipset, assuming 
such a driver exists in your (somewhat antiquated) version of RedHat.
   And speaking of antiquated, as a general rule, it's a recipe for 
disaster to use a release of an OS that pre-dates any of your hardware. 
You might want to consider going with RedHat 9, or even Fedora Core. 
Although, Fedora is very much a work in progress, and even when you do 
everything right it still falls on it's face once in a while. It's that 
whole bleeding-edge thing. :)
   Hope this helps! If any of it is too vague, ask and I'll try again. 
If you get stuck further into the process, post the output of lspci and 
the contents of your XF86Config file (if any) and I'll see if I can help.

Good luck!

-Tim

-- 
Proprietary software is like petrified wood. It used to be alive, but
then it was fixed in time and put in a box. GNU/Linux software, in
contrast, is alive, always changing and improving. I love that it's
more a process than a product.  - Pamela Jones, Groklaw




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