can't get X working

Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: can't get X working
started by: Bob Vila

Posted by Bob Vila on Oct. 16 2004,04:20

I have an old IBM Thinkpad 560 that i have been running slack9.1 on and decided to give DSL a try. but when i try to do X (vesa 800x600 8bit) it comes up with all these wierd colored streaks across my screen. in fact, the only resolution at which i can get into X is 640x480 at 4 bits. any suggestions?

Posted by roberts on Oct. 16 2004,06:06

Have you tried framebuffer mode? At the boot prompt type:

boot fb800x600

Note this is no dsl on the boot line then be sure to select framebuffer when the X configuration screen comes up.

Posted by Bob Vila on Oct. 16 2004,20:52

i dont see a boot line where i can select that from???

i edited lilo.conf to vga=259 (i believe this is 800x600x8 bit) and selected framebuffer from xsetup.sh. when i rebooted, it said

Code Sample

X10: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0" after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

is there anything i can do?

Posted by roberts on Oct. 16 2004,21:04

You already have DSL installed on the hard drive?
Better to boot from CD and get X working then install to hard drive.
When boot from CD you can try various options. At boot prompt press F2 to see options, such as dsl vga=normal or fb800x600 etc. Once you have X working from CD then the dsl-hdinstall will pass the correct parameters for a hard drive install.

Posted by Bob Vila on Oct. 17 2004,01:36

ah ok, i will see how that works

Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 17 2004,02:33

FYI,

The boot command for frame buffer 800x600 is:

fb800x600

and NOT

dsl fb800x600

in case you were wondering.

Posted by mdinolfo on Nov. 08 2004,09:31

Since I'm trying to get DSL running on a 560 too, I figured I'd ask a few questions:

1. I also cannot get DSL running in other than 640x480x4 bit mode. I'm trying to run DSL off a 512 MB compact flash card that I did a DSL frugal_instal to. So I guess the first question is- have you had any success in getting 800x600x8 bit up and running? And if so, then how?

2. I see that roberts suggested that DSL first be booted from CD to get X working. But I cannot do this, because I do not have a bootable CD hooked up to the 560. (The compact flash install was done on another computer- I booted up from CD, mounted the compact flash card on a USB CF card reader, then edited frugal_instal to allow for installation to the CF reader. Then the CF card was physically transferred to the thinkpad 560, in place of the previous hard drive, using a CF-to-IDE adaptor.) So another question would be- how can you do a CD install with a 560?

3. Previously I had gotten a Slackware 9.1 installation done on the 560, and I got X working OK with 800x600x8bit resolution. The Slackware XF86Config file has a few lines in it that are not present in the DSL XF86Config file. I tried editing the DSL XF86Config file to add the lines but apparently this file (and maybe all of the files containted in the KNOPPIX file??) cannot be directly edited from within a running DSL system. So- how would I directly edit the XF86Config file on a DSL system?

Any and all suggestions appreciated.

Posted by pyronicte on Nov. 11 2004,15:56

Have you seek the module for your video card model? In my case, I have to do it, change in XF86Config the model of video card, and add the modelines appropiates. Also in default screen, change the depth to 16 or 24.

Posted by lefty.crupps on Nov. 21 2005,03:16

Hey, I just started on my own DSL 1.5 on an old IBM TP560E. I too cannot get past the 640x480x4 problem. Has anyone solved this?

Posted by Benminnn on Nov. 22 2005,06:06

Exact same problem. Bump!