1. I recently acquired two identical PC's equipped with an Asus CUSI-FX main board sporting the SIS 630E graphics chip.
2. They currently share an entry-level monitor with a third machine via a KVM. 3. Both new machines run freshly-installed copies of Red hat 7.1. The third machine has a matrox G450 and also runs Red hat 7.1 4. I activated the console in graphics mode on the new machines- vga=791 (1024x768, depth=16) in /etc/lilo.conf & everything looked fine upon rebooting. I also tested a number of fonts by editing /etc/sysconfig/i18n a few times looking for something suitably sized. 5. Satisfied with the results, I eventually restarted X (startx -> startkde) & after a while issued a CTRL+ALT+F2 to switch back to a console. This had some strange results: All windows except the one with the focus disappeared, the background became black, and both the keyboard & mouse stopped responding. I repeated the scenario on the second machine. The keyboard was not completely dead since I was able to bounce both machines via a CTRL+ALT+DELETE. 6. At this point I gradually backed out my changes in /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/sysconfig/i18n. As I was still experiencing diverse problems - X didn't start, mainly.. I decided to take a look at the corresponding Xfree86.log file in /var/log/ hoping I would find some clue. Was in for a bit of a shock: there was no Xfree86.log file to be found in /var/log. 7. The next step was to use Xconfigurator. I could not find much info about what this utility does behind the scenes but I was hoping that there was an outside chance that something had been corrupted and that recreating the setup from scratch might result in some cleanup and get X back on its feet. 8. As I was still encountering pretty much the same problems after trying various options in Xconfigurator, I eventually shut down all three machines and reconnected one of the ailing PC's directly to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Using Xconfigurator and what I felt were rather conservative predefined settings, I was able to create a /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file with which I was able to start X succesfully. I verified that I was also able to switch back to a virtual console via CTRL+ALT+F2. 9. The next step was to bring the KVM back into the picture, but before that I decided to double check on the health of my X setup by reviewing the startup messages. I issued an 'X -probeonly | more' and found that I was running XFREE86 version 3.3.6..! I run RH 7.1 on two other machines, and I verified that they both run XFree86 4.0.3... Well, that would account for the absence of xfree86.log files in /var/log I thought. But then to make things more interesting, I discovered that the 'X -probeonly...' had created an xfree86.log file... whose first line went 'XFree86 Version 4.0.3 / X Window System'... A. Having saved the previous version of the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file I found that the only difference was that the HorizSync range was slightly different: 31.5 - 48.5 in the new version instead of 30 - 48 - and that the VertRefresh value I had specified was also different (50 - 70 / 50 - 90). But then since I was running version 3.3.6 shouldn't I be looking at /etc/X11/XF86Config instead of ../../XF86Config-4..??? I did some checking on symbolic links in /etc/X11/ and /usr/X11R6/bin/ but I didn't see anything suspicious. B. Repeated the same motions on the sibling machine and that got me back pretty much to where I started - ie. with a very ugly and impractical console mode.. and none the wiser about what might have happened. --- I am unsure whether X not working as I had hoped points to a problem either with my hardware or in the XF86_SVGA driver... or whether I am doing something I shouldn't and was just lucky to get away with it on my other machines.. but since I have both the time and the luxury of at least one test machine that I can break & rebuild at will I thought I might as well investigate a little further. And as to how I could be running what appears to be the wrong version of X (?) I'm drawing a complete blank. It makes no sense since I had done a fresh install of Rhl 7.1 on one of the two machines immediately prior to discovering the problem (that was about twelve hours ago). Needless to say, I spent a good part of these twelve hours searching the web for clues but haven't found anything. --- Any suggestions or pointers as to how I could proced with this would be greatly appreciated..!! Thanks, Cga. _______________________________________________ Newbie mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** To unsubscribe , or change message options, see: http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/newbie
