doctor@fruitbat.org
Sun, 1 Aug 1999 00:12:46 -0700 (PDT)
Marco Jordan said ...
> Hi,
>
> Today I installed LinuxPPC 1999 on an ANS 700 using Scott Every's
> installer . Everything went fine, but I got one (big) problem. My
> Xserver won't work.
>
> XConfigurator detected the Cirrus 54m30 videocard (I suppose this is OK)
> and I picked my monitor from the list. So far so good, but when Linux
> tried to open the Xserver it failed. It showed the message 'There is a
> problem with your Xconfiguration. You may go back and modify your
> configuration or exit now' I recognised the message from my installation
> on my PC, but that was because my videocard was not supported, which is
> not the case right now.
Yes, this is exactly what I experienced recently installing LinuxPPC 1999.
Actually, in my case I saw the screen with the X cursor appear for a
brief second and then return to text mode with the error. I suspect it's
simply that the X server startup couldn't start the window manager or
whatever it's test program was.
> I got two other problems too. During the boot a couple of times the
> message '/boot/system.map incorrect kernel version'. Is this a
> problem????
For the short term, no. The message is only cautionary. Here's what's
going on: You booted from Scotts installer. The Scotts installer is
based on the 2.2.4 kernel. LinuxPPC 1999 supplies a pre-built 2.2.6
kernel along with a System.map that matches it and this is what's
installed on the hard disk. After finishing the install you booted from
floppy, again using Scotts vmlinux.coff boot image. Again, this image is
based on a 2.2.4 kernel, and the various startup scripts which do a quick
sanity check will complain that 2.2.4 != 2.2.6. Once you get around to
building your own kernel, this message shouldn't occur anymore.
Now, a note about the 2.2.6 pre-built kernel on LinuxPPC 1999: don't use
it. Quite frankly it doesn't have the MACE patch nor any of the other
patches for the ANS. Thus, when you boot from it, your ethernet device
won't work properly. The best solution, so far, is to boot the 2.2.4
image and ftp the 2.2.7 source from ftp://ftp.emji.net/pub/ans/ and build
a fresh 2.2.7 kernel.
> Another thing is that sometimes my screen goes white and for one second
> I am unable to do anything. This problem didn't occur during the
> installation but began after logging in as root. Is this a known
> problem???
Yes, that flash is your X server attempting to start (via xdm?).
LinuxPPC (like RedHat) boot the system with a default runlevel of 5.
Runlevel 5 will attempt to startup X for a graphic login. If, however,
your X server wasn't correctly configured (as in the above example), then
what you get is a constant switching between a text console (VT#1) and a
white graphic screen (VT#7), making it impossible to login! Normally
this wouldn't be so bad, because you could telnet in from some other
machine and correct the problem. However! It appears that none of the
inet services are enabled by default in this release, so you can't telnet
in!! My only re-course was to reboot into single-user mode and fix the
inittab file (I'll fix X later).
> I am not really a Linux expert although I am an experienced computer
> user (Amiga, Windows, Macintosh etc.) so my problems might be little
> ones (I hope so).
>
> Any suggestions???
Reboot from floppy with the 'single' kernel parameter and edit
/etc/inittab and change the default runlevel from 5 to, say, 3, and
reboot.
> Thanks,
> Marco
One last note: has anyone submitted the ANS specific patches to the
LinuxPPC maintainer, as well as to the maintainers of the main-line Linux
kernels? Oh, and, Scott, umm, when can we expect a 2.2.10 kernel? ;-)
Keep up the good work!!
-- Peter A. Castro (doctor@fruitbat.org) or (pcastro@us.oracle.com)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sun Aug 01 1999 - 00:12:40 PDT