I have tried the live cd for KDE 4 as well as the DVD and have installed GNOME and also KDE 3.5 and I always get the login prompt. This is not the graphical login prompt. When OpenSUSE tries to start up the screen flashed a few times and then brings me back to the non-graphical login prompt. I have tried every thing below and non works.
init 1
init 5
sax2 -a “This does some thing but does not start up any thing and then if I try the startx it fails”
sax2 --fullscreen
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa --fullscreen
sax2 --vesa 0:1024x768@75 and also sax2 --vesa 0:1024x768@60.
For most of the sax2 commands I get the below error.
SaX: startup
xc: sorry could not start configuration server
xc: for details refer to the log file.
/var/log/SaX.log
xc: abort…
I have not had problems with Debian, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva and others. SimplyMEMPIS gives me problems but once I run the configuration for the XServer again it works with no issues at all. I did not have problems with OpenSUSE the version that was before KDE 4 was released and had not tried it since then. I am writing this using Debain because I can not get OpenSUSE 11.1 to work.
Below is what I get by doing the command you wanted me to do. I actually just did the last part in Debian to get you what was needed. I will try the sax2 -r and see what happens with it.
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800/K8N800/K8N800A [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800/K8N800/K8N800A [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 01)
I don’t have any experience with this problematic chipset, but I think you will need to make sure that you have the xorg-x11-driver-video-unichrome package installed first.
Do
rpm -qa |grep xorg-x11-driver
to find out. It should already be installed, but if not, you can install the S3 Unichrome drivers via zypper:
I did the rpm command and it did have the right driver. I then tried the sax2 -r -m 0=via and got the same error I seem to always get. I appreciate the help.
Hmmm… this one could be over my head. Can you post working xorg.conf for Debian or any distro that works? I’m hoping that its not a new kernel/Xorg issue, and only a config issue.
Another left-field idea I’ve just had (since you have nothing to lose) is to try the ‘xorgconfig’ utility. It is a CLI program that will prompt the user for applicable hardware details and generate a basic xorg.conf file. Give it a shot.
I did not know about xorgconfig as I know the way SimplyMEMPIS does things and this is dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg. I was looking for a command that would work on opensuse to do the same thing but I guess the xorgconfig works with any distribution. Thanks for the information. Below is the xorg.conf file from the debain distribution.
xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
values from the debconf database.
Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
(Type “man xorg.conf” at the shell prompt.)
This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades only
if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
package.
If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
I tried the command given but it goes through and has me configure every thing. I did not enter any thing for my on-board graphics card and of course when I did the startx it failed due to not being able to find a monitor. I like the other command in that it does a lot of defaulting and thus I do not have to configure much at all. I will have to look for a command like this for OpenSUSE which may be the same command all the way around.
Your posted xorg.conf show that Device, Monitor, and Screen sections all unconfigured. So X will definitely not be happy with that. The xorgconfig utility is just a basic Xorg CLI config program. sax2 is the opensuse-specific utility. I’m all out of ideas for now…
I had an ATI PCI graphics card from work and I was able to install using this. It is not as good as the onboard graphics since the one I am using is much older. I do not know why it did not work as part of the install is to configure X11 which it did for both the gnome and kde installs. Oh well I got it working.
I recently had this same sort of problem while installing on a Twinhead Durabook S14K/N14RA laptop.
The CD booted fine and I got graphics at the right res - but then after it had loaded I got the login prompt.
I checked dmesg and lspci and found that it had correctly identified the onboard video as the Via K8N800/K8M800 S3 Unichrome Pro chipset. AMI BIOS set to max (64) shared ram.
I logged in as root and ran sax2.
The log file listed several accesses of the via video chipset, including ones that mapped the framebuffer, but the final such mapping crapped out.
I did the following sequence and it worked:
init 1
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
init 5
I hope this helps someone else.
I am sooooo happy to have escaped the grasp of the evil empire an become a linux user.