So New I have an Umbillical Cord

[Suzanne Payne]

--On Saturday, February 22, 2003 1:48 pm +0000 Nick 
<email@ilikepaperandpens.com> wrote:

> a) Don't give up hope just yet, repartition the old girl and stick with
> os 8/9 (thanks Chuck) b) its an xserver problem (thanks Markus and
> Suzanne)

Never give up hope!  Even if you never get it to work, you'll have learned 
a lot in the process and the next time you embark on a Linux/Unix project 
you'll be able to talk confidently about X-Servers and XF86Config files, 
thus impressing all your friends! :)


> Suzanne: Thanks for your help, I looked into the log and then  drifted
> into a codde-based-coma when it sprawled into pages. Is it a positive
> sign that i can get it to boot up in this fail-safe mode?

Skip to the end of the file.  It lists all the things it loads correctly 
(which you don't need to know because there's nothing wrong!) and the file 
will end shortly after the fatal error which causes the X server to crash 
out.  Type:
more /var/log/XFree86.0.log
to get it to disply on the screen and press either enter or the space bar 
to scroll down.  The sign that something's wrong is (EE) at the beginning 
of the line or (WW) to indiacate a warning.  At the very begnning of the 
file it says what the markers are.


> Everyone: an anyone tell me why on the 2.2 kernel I get a perfectly
> rendered xga penguin watching my screen startup, but on the other kernel
> it looks like the penguin is road kill? (incredibly low colour depth and
> distorted).

Dunno!  That's beyond the limit of my unix knowledge :)  All I know is that 
YDL recommend if you're having trouble on older machines to try using the 
older kernel.  I assume that later kernels are optimised for later 
machines/hardware and therefore not so suitable for old machines.

Suzanne