Re: round 2

[Jake Morrison <jake_morrison@example.com>]

Peter,

--- Peter Evans <peter@example.com> wrote:
> Me:
> 
> > I trust that RH 7.1 installation won't croak either. We'll see....
> 
> It didn't croak, exactly, but it still seemed screwy. For one thing,
> just like RH6.2, RH7.1 announced:
> 
> "X probe results
> "Video card: Trident TGUI9660 (generic)"
> 
> without giving me the option to disagree. Funny, as I know precisely,
> and not just generically, what video card I have.
> 
> Things got better a bit later. I had the opportunity to specify, if
> not the card, then at least the amount of VRAM, horizontal 
> and vertical refresh rates, clock chip (I didn't know that one, 
> and plumped for "No clockchip setting (recommended)") and 
> color depth. But at the end of that interrogation, I read
> 
> "Starting X "Xconfigurator will now start X to test 
> your configuration"
> 
> and a bit later
> 
> "Error There is a problem with your X configuration. You 
> may go back and modify your configuration or exit now."
> 
> (No, no indication of what the error was.) Since "Back" led to the
> same questions, the second time I saw this screen I chose "Quit".  
> RH said that installation was complete. (Not that it was 
> incomplete but finished.)

Sounds like you got the X files copied to the disk, but the
automated configuration process failed. So you will just need
to get things configured properly, and it should work (no
more RPM hell).
 
> 
> When I rebooted, I saw for an instant an illustration of a red hat. I
> guessed that this meant there was some workable data about my
> graphic display. My dummies unleashed book tells me where a 
> pile of XFree86 docs are; I went to the subdirectory and 
> found but a single file. Thinks: "What do I do with this? 
> 'list' doesn't work, 'type' doesn't work. . . ."
> 
> Yet again I'm glad I bought Volkerding and Reichard, *Linux in Plain
> English*, which has a DOS to Linux translation table.  Ah -- "less"!
> 
> I type less and there read that the doc is all about the previous
> version of XFree86 and that I should go to the website.
> 
> I dutifully go to the website. Lots of stuff about how to install
> 4.1.0, and (on http://www.xfree86.org/4.0.2/index.html) 
> lots of "Information for xxxx users", where xxxx does not 
> equal what I'm using. Ah.

This is fairly typical Linux....the books are out of date, so 
you need to go to the website (and other net resources).
You may find the docs under /usr/share/doc useful, though. 

> 
> I guess that I'm not running X, but I really don't know. (As I
> [mis]understand it, X is a task-switching system and a kind of
> substrate for a GUI, not a GUI itself.) 

That is true to some extent. The "substrate" is the X server program,
which actually talks to the hardware and puts things on the screen.
X terminology is a bit wierd: the "X server" runs on the client 
machine. The "X client" programs (running on the same machine 
or a remote machine) talk to the "X server" program, asking it
to display things. 

It is possible for individual programs (e.g. the "xterm" terminal
program) to run directly on top of the X server, but it is more
typical to run a window manager, which handles things like opening
and closing windows, or a full-blown "desktop environment" like
KDE or Gnome.

  
> And anyway I figure 
> that it won't let me screw anything up by any attempt of mine 
> to have it run it on top of itself.

Probably not. You can, however, damage your video hardware if
you drive it outside what it can handle. So, if you are mussing
with video timings and things blank out (or your monitor makes
bad noises), you may be better turning off the power and starting
over. But that's unlikely.
 
In many cases, you can just hit the magic "CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE" to
kill the X server. (A similar useful command is "CTRL-ALT-ESCAPE",
which executes "xkill" to bring up a "cursor of death" which 
you can use to kill off misbehaving programs by clicking on their 
window.)
> 
> There's no indication in my unleashed dummies book about 
> how to start (as opposed to install, etc.) X.  
> Since "XFree86 -version" (was it?)
> tells me the version, I guess that "XFree86" might do the job.
> 
> I type XFree86 and Enter.
> 
> Wowee, grafix! I get a gray screen with an X cursor.
> 
> Very handsome, but not terribly informative. What am I supposed to do
> with this? 

That's actually pretty good news. It means your X server started up.
But it may have problems down the line. 

What you need to do is start the whole environment. To do this
from the command line, run "startx", which is a shell script which
runs everthing. 

> How would I start guh-nome? 
I normally use KDE...but I think you can start gnome 
directly with "/usr/bin/startgnome". But it is probably best
to go with "startx".

Many folks run with the "graphical" login manager, so the
system boots directly into X. You then login, with the option
to choose which environment -- KDE, Gnome -- to use (and 
other options like language, in some cases). 

But this can wait until you get your X server running properly.

The graphical login runs under "runlevel 5". Booting to a console
is "runlevel 3". You are best to run at runlevel 3 until you
have your X server set up properly. If it is booting to the
graphical login and crapping out, you may want to change the
default run level. Edit /etc/inittab and change the line
that says
id:5:initdefault:
to
id:3:initdefault:

> Or how would I get out? 
> (How do I turn off the computer so I can go off and meet friends 
> for dinner at seven?)

Well, Unix systems are not typically designed to be turned off.
They just stay up forever :-)

The command you are looking for is "/sbin/halt", run as root.
To reboot, you can run (surprise!) "/sbin/reboot".

> 
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Peter Evans peter@example.com
> 
> 

Regards,
Jake


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