[2884] in SIPB_Linux_Development
Athena 8.4 install and HP Vetra VE8's.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Thu Jul 20 18:59:32 2000
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 22:59:15 +0000 ()
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: linux-dev@MIT.EDU
The good news is that the 8.4 install works with my little stable of HP
machines a bit better than the 8.3 install did.
The bad news is that it's not perfect. I'm sending this note out to
solicit ideas for next steps.
Background:
In addition to leading Team Athena, I'm working on a digital library
project with HP. They insisted our team use HP machines. I insisted
that our team run Athena. So I've been using the IS Linux Athena system
on these machines.
Situation:
The Athena 8.3 install did two things wrong:
The installed Linux would not see 192M of memory, it would only see 64M.
When run in non-interactive mode, Xconfigurator would core dump
leaving me to boot in single user mode and to run the program by hand
to get XF86Config happy.
Good News:
Xconfigurator runs and creates an XF86Config file.
Bad News:
The file tries to drive the display MUCH too hard. It starts X in
1600x1200 mode with too fast a refresh and I get a jaggy screen.
Also, the extra memory is still ignored until I hand-edit lilo.conf.
Work Arounds:
I hand edit lilo.conf to append="mem=192M"
I hand edit XF86Config to set 1280x1024, and to set the maximum horiz
sync to 88 instead of 96. (If I just try to run 1280x1024 without
lowering the horiz sync, the monitor will not let me display anything.)
Question:
How should I proceed to try and get these problems isolated, and fixed?
I don't think these are necessarily problems with Linux Athena, as such,
just in using unexplored paths through non-interactive config tools.
-wdc
