Weird .... All help gratefully received.

[Fraser]

Not so much a Linux question as a linux-related question... but weird anyway

I have a "playpen". This is a PC that I keep for playing about with. It has gone through multiple iterations over the years, and until yesterday was an old compaq iPaq motherboard with a Pentium III 800MHz CPU. The iPaq motherboard had on-board VGA.

I had installed Linspire and Linux Fedora Core 2.

I swapped out the mobo yesterday and fiited up a new one with an AMD Duron 1.2 that had come from an upgrade done for my son. The new mobo did not have on-board VGA.

So, for avoidance of confusion:

out: 800MHz Pentium, and board with on-board VGA
in: AMD 1.2 and mobo with a Display card....an ATI Rage card

Linspire looked at the new stuff, and booted beautifully.

Fedora cracked the shits and said it could not load the GUI server core. I figured the problem must be the display card driver and stuck in a bog-standard Trio 64v. ...Still no joy.

I figured I had better simply re-install all of the Fedora software. ...When I tried it told me that all my fedora CDs were corrupt. These are exactly the same CDs that I used originally... in exactly the same CD-ROM, on exactly the same HD.

Questions:

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

HOW DO I FIX IT?

Fraser

[mbottrell]

Before you format the disks.

Each video card has different timings.
If you wisht to get X working do the following.


a. Login remotely via ssh.
b. ensure the variable DISPLAY is set..
echo $DISPLAY
localhost:10.0
Make sure you are running X on the machine you came from... (Cygwin - provides a free X server for Windows!)

If you have done this... now you can issue:
system-config-display
You will get a graphical display load up that will allow you to seelct the correct display card and monitor. :)

This will edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf

You can look at this manually. Those who know how to manually edit it can. It is the same as the previous XF86Config file.

Hope this helps...

As the to the CDs... can you read them from another computer?
You may be able to follow the instructions on the CD README and create either a HTTP or FTP install base from another computer. :) This is how I install... saves the issues of changing CDs... or bad media.

Hope that's of some help.

Cheers,

Matt.

[Fraser]

Too late... in desperation I had already "fdisked" the lot, with a view to a clean install... but it still never got past the anaconda installation package.

Eventually I solved the problem... it had nothing to do with Linux...

The new mobo just didn't like the Mitsubishi Diamond Data CD-ROM that I was using. I put an old Samsung 24 speed unit it, and it runs fine.... and seems to be installing Fedora 2 again as we speak... Updates later.


Update... Now up and running.

[DrT33th]

Bloody Typical of you...

Cheap crappy hardware! Go-on, spend some cash whydontcha, and buy some decent bits... or even better, buy some beer!

[PS, if you're done with the Mitsubishi unit, can I have it! ]:p

[mbottrell]

As a side note...

If you think the CDs are dodgy (For Fedora) you can check these during the install process.
linux mediacheck will allow you to check it :)
You can also test your computer memory (often why Linux installs fail), via the command: memtest86
Cheers,

Matt.

[Fraser]

Originally posted by mbottrell
As a side note...

If you think the CDs are dodgy (For Fedora) you can check these during the install process.

Yup, did that, the Mitsubishi CD-ROM said they were OK when on the old MOBO and dodgy whn on the new, and the Samsung said okay, and installed fine.

It was some weird conflict between the Mitsibishi CD-ROM and the new MOBO (Which is a strange thing called an A-Plus, bought cheap in a shop in the city ... it is probably a re-badged something else even cheaper).