[60582] in Hotline Meeting
Re: Linux Installation Error (Was: Re: Case 294377: This case has recently been updated)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (andrew m. boardman)
Thu Aug 1 23:15:42 2002
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 23:15:40 -0400
Message-Id: <200208020315.XAA03266@pothole.mit.edu>
From: "andrew m. boardman" <amb@MIT.EDU>
To: zicheng@rwf.lms.MIT.EDU
CC: hotline@MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: <200208020013.UAA29586@hampster.mit.edu> (hotline@MIT.EDU)
Lou/Hotline: feel free to close this, it's more my problem than yours.
Richard: The hotline folks passed your problem to me; I do a lot of the
linux-specific Athena development, and am probably the one to help.
>However, it seems that the Xconfigurator did not set things up well, so
>that via Ctrl-Alt-F7 appears on the monitor as a "input not supported"
>message, indicating that the resolution is not suited for the monitor.
Unfortunately, that's a common issue; proper X configuration for all
platforms is a hard problem. There are a few options:
1) reboot, and type "linux -s" at the LILO prompt. That will get you to
a shell prompt in single-user mode. From there, you can run
Xconfigurator, although you'll want to run "/etc/init.d/xfs start"
first (this start the font server), otherwise X may not be able to start.
2) At that single-user prompt, you can also edit /etc/inittab, and
comment out this line:
1:2345:once:echo "Type CTRL-ALT-F7 to log in." > /dev/tty1
...and UNcomment this line:
#1:2345:respawn:/etc/athena/mingetty tty1
...and then boot normally. That way, you'll always be able to get a
tty login via Control-Alt-F1. Keep in mind, though, that this is
insecure, since if you have a locked X session, someone can switch to
the tty login, log in there, and do all sorts of mischief.
3) If you're installing another machine in future, you can select the
custom install option, which will let you choose a custom X
configuration. This will drop you into Xconfigurator after the
install so that you can configure however you like.
Hope this is useful; feel free to drop me a note if you have further
questions.
PS: with regard to the other problem that you sent mail to bugs about,
could I come look at that machine at some point? This is *extremely*
curious behaviour.
