Yellow Dog 3.0 installation from CD problem

[Mike Haase]

In a nutshell, when I go to bootx, select the ramdisk, select the boot image
and click on "LINUX", I get the "loading advansys scsi driver" screen, and
then the starting X notes at the bottom of the screen, and finally the
Yellowdog Installation Dialog appears.  But, the window it is displayed in
is normal height but half the width of the terminal screen.  The text is
unreadable!

History:
I had previously downloaded and burned cds from the 20030325 disk1 through
disk3.  I was able to install YDL 3.0 from those disks.  But-there were a
few anomolies where RPMs would not install.  So I figured that the disk
images were probably corrupted.

I md5sum'ed the iso's and they proved to be ok.  I dd'd the cds back to iso
images and md5sum'ed them.  Disks 2 and 3 were ok but there seemed to be a
discrepancie in disk 1.  I noticed that a newer image of disk 1 was
available and downloaded it, burned it to cd, and made sure the md5sum of
the iso was ok and that an iso created from the burned cd was ok too.  So it
looked to be good to go.

Since I am pretty sure the new image is ok and the old one was not, I also
replaced the ramdisk image, and linux image, etc. on my OS 9.1 disk.  So I
felt pretty sure that life was sweet.  But the problem above has surfaced.
Very disapointing.

Analyisis:
By switching screens (CTL-ALT+[1,2,3,4,7]) I got to a command prompt (1).  A
ps shows that there are a number of install related processes running
including X.  X uses a config file located in /tmp.  I think its
/tmp/XF86Config.temp.  So X is using fbdev and the montior is apparantly the
right v/h hz settings.  The modes are 1240x768x[8|12|16|24|15] bits with the
default color of 15 bits.  (15 bit default???? Maybe thats why the color is
so hosed).  Did I mention that the colors are hosed?  Yeah.

So by looking [and looking...and...] on the web I see that the parameters to
the bootx (boot parameters) include the possiblity of setting the frame
buffer device as in
    video=fbdev:vmode:12,cmode:24
and possibly
    video=vga
(although I have not tried that yet).

(basically the vmode mapps to a screen resolution (600x800) and hsync (75)
while the cmode is the number of bits of color (24).

I have tried to use this video=... but have had no visable success. Whatever
is setting the XF86Config.temp file up is determined to use 1024x768x15 and
70 hz.

Up untill last nite I thought that the problem might have been somehow
related to the Voodoo5 5500 card driving my 17" Sony monitor.  But, in
desperation, I put a VGA adaptor on the video port of the MAC 7500 and
plugged the monitor in there.  But same result!

So - here I sit thinking evil thoughts.  Here's one....

On most X displays you can cycle thorugh the modes using the +/- key and
some combination of control keys.  Since the XF86Config.temp file has
several modes I have tried to guess the right keys to cycle throught the
modes to find one that works but no joy there either.  (Any hints guys?)

And then I though - hey, I could just edit the XF86Config.temp file to get a
setup that has worked before (remember I did get YDL 3.0 running with X on
this self same hardware and have run YDL 2.0 on it since its release....).
If only I edit the config file and then do a CTL-E to restart the x-server.
Yeah - sounds good.  But, recall that the xserver was started (use ps -ef to
see) with a sting of options including "-terminate".  Without having looked
very far to see what that does, I suspect it is responsible for the
behaviour that follows entering CTL-E.  It hammers the x-server ok.  But
when X terminates it also starts shutting down the scripting that runst the
install.  So pretty soon you are looking at a message saying that "you can
safely reboot your computer".   So - lemmee ask you....when did microsoft
start supporting YDL?  Does this make sense to you?  What were they
thinking?

Anyway - I'm sorta guessed out on this one.  Gimme a clue...

Thanks