[svlug] Re: WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET A WORKING LINUX MACHINE

[Ray Olszewski]

I hope we take this discussion through to a conclusion and not give it up as
hopeless. For the "victims," I know it's frustrating to go through this kind
of hassle and then have to respond to basic questions about what you did ...
but if you don't provide some detail, even the most helpful participant on
the list can offer only general suggestions.

At the moment, I'm curious about a discrepancy between two of the recent
postings.

At 12:24 PM 8/5/98 -0700, Raffi wrote:
>I happened to get involved in this so here is my take on it: It was one of
>the most difficult X related setups (or attempts at it) in my Linux
>career.
>
>We tried different cards, SIIG and Diamond Stealth S220. None of them is
>listed in any prexisting setup file. We used S3 and different RAMDACs and
>without them. We tried the most simple VGA and SVGA setup. No way would
>anything work. Cards were new, out of the box.
[deleted]

> I don't understand why the setup program is able to come up in what seems
> to be 800x600 mode to use the mouse to select chipsets, many params, and
> monitor while failing in testing X in any mode with error 111 from X
> server?  At least one mode should be good, the one that runs the GUI setup
> itself.
[rest deleted]

Later, sflory wrote (responding to the last paragraph above):
>
>  I believe it's running in vga mode.  Every card I've used could
>be run in vga mode.  I remember my first linux install I ran in vga
> for 3 months, because I couldn't access the internet from home.  
[rest deleted]

I end up confused. My own experience matches sflory's. Personally, I've
never found a video card that didn't support BOTH the basic vga16 and the
svga server. Might we be looking at a problem that is peculiar to Red Hat (I
use Slackware myself)? Does RH include SuperProbe and, if so, what info does
it give about the cards? 

As to the "error 111" report Raffi mentions, this in itself is unhelpful.
Here is what the X11 FAQ says (at URL
http://www.xfree86.org/FAQ/index.html#Err11) about this error code (please
note the following is a quote, not my words):

-----BEGIN QUOTE----------

"Whenever the XFree86 Xserver crashes, dies, ceases to exist or is
inaccessible for any reason, you will see this error message. It is a
message from an X-client (=any program running on your XFree86 Xserver, for
example the window manager) telling you that it tried to connect to your
Xserver, but failed to do some for 'some' reason. 

"Quoting only this message in a bug report is therefore utterly useless.
Look in the server output for the real reason why the server died. Normally
you should see the real error message (=why the server stopped working) a
few lines before the 'error 111' message. 

"If you still can't make head or tails of all those messages, make sure to
quote the FULL server output in your bug report. It is impossible to provide
you with any help, if you just mention the 'error 111', as so many people do. 

"Obtaining the full server output is normally accomplished by redirecting
both standard output and standard error to a file while starting the server.
On some systems this is done by default."
 
---END QUOTE----------

Based on my own experience (I suffered through one of these a few months ago
myself), "error 111" could mean something as simple as that the server was
missing from the hard disk -- as I recall, Red Hat isn't very diligent about
ALWAYS installing the vga16 and svga servers, and xf86config is quite
willing to let you specify a server that is not actually available. Or it
could be something trickier -- no way to know yet.

So ... perhaps a more detailed posting of the stdout/stderr output to the
list would help? 
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
762 Garland Drive
Palo Alto, CA  94303-3603
650.321.3561 voice                               ray at comarre.com
650.322.1209 fax                 http://www.comarre.com/ray.html
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