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Hi Darien
All of the below relates to Debian but your version
should be similar...
First of all, Linux is not windows, it's far more
capable, but complex, and will require ALOT of effort on your part to learn as
much as pos for yourself, (even if some of the manual info that has been
written is so technically unreadable unless your Spock) you cant have a
minimilist attitude toward it, you have to think.
I've been playing with it on and off for 3 years and am
a beginner - get a good book that teaches command line stuff, you cant avoid it
and it's far better in the long run knowing the internal commands and file
structure.
For now:
Read the manual page:
$ man XFree86
for an overview and other man pages.
The hardest part of Linux (maybe!) is getting the
X server to work with particular hardware - it can take weeks! Finding drivers
(modules - savage.o, s3.o etc), if your graphics card is new, as they wont be
contained in the kernel/distribution, then find they may have to be
compiled, then they may need particular xfree86 version to run, so you have to
download/install that....etc, etc.
Install vim so you can read/edit files in terminal mode
(requires learning basic commands also, :q to quit, :w to write, press i to
insert text, Esc to escape to command mode etc) can be found out
with
$ vimtutor
Running
$ xf86config
or one of the other X config progs generates the
XF86Config or XF86Config-4 file which is usually in /etc/X11 which contains
- amongst other things - your responses to the questions. It is called as part
of the X server spawning process. Info at all stages of the spawning process is
output to a log file usually
/var/log/XFree86.0.log
This is what you may see scrolling down your screen as
the X server tries to start (if you can see anything at all! I cant with mine at
the mo)
If you dont know where this file is try (startx has to
have been run once to generate the file)
$ find / -name XFree86.0.log
then you can go to the dir that this shows you
and:
$ vi /var/log/X (tab,tab) gives you the options in that
dir, pick this file and open it. Read through it, get familiar with the load
process.
The using vt7 is normal as the X server runs on
terminal 7 (= Alt-F7) leaving the others (Alt-F1 to Alt-F6 for command
line usage logging in on 6 seperate terms simultaneously. Very handy for
debugging as you leave a page of info open in one term and use another to do
something else.
If your X session shuts the monitor down as it crashes,
you use Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get away from the crashed Alt-F7 term and resume normal
term sessions Alt-F1 to Alt F6
When you run xf86config (or...) you get a card database
section, I've just checked for your ATI Radeon 9000 and it''s not listed for
Debian3.1, but maybe your mandrake dist has it, in which case your lucky so your
problem may not be an incorrect driver, but it sounds too new to me,
which is why you need the line of failure from XFree86.0.log. to see if it loads
the ATI driver module or not.
Are you running the correct x server also? In debian I
run
$dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
to choose which xserver, ie s3, savage, ATI etc. Find
the equivalent in Mandrake
Try
$ tail -20
/var/log/XFree86.0.log This shows the last 20
lines of the file and should show the lead up to where the server crashed. This
is what you need to see for more clues. (guess what? $head -20 (filename) would
show first 20 lines of a file)
Also find info relating to your bus
hardware
$ lspci (-v)
$ scanpci -v
There should be bus id numbers in the form 00:00:00 for
each peripheral and the vga card should be there with either the card name or
"unknown". In XF86Config file has a line for the bus id which you may have to
check is correct for you vga card.
hope this helps and opens some doors for
you.
regards
SteveE
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