On 06-Aug-10 09:59:42, Simon Royal wrote:
Martin I am not sure how to 'hop on to a virtual console'. I am a bit of a linux noob.
It looks as though this means whatg you get if, with the X display operating (correctly or not), you press Ctrl+Alt+F1 which will (should) give you a plain black&white console screen (in this case the one that the various messages were scrolling up on during the boot process, before X cut in).
There are in fact (in the default setup) 6 possible such screens, numbered 1 to 6, accessible by using F1, F2, ... , F6 with the Ctrl+Alt combination, so Ctrl+Alt+F1 gives you the first. They are called "virtual consoles" (though in their way they are just as real as anything else).
There are more "virtual consoles" available -- 7, 8, ... (up to perhaps 12, depending on how many function keys you have).
The one which X is running in is (by default) No. 7, so if, for instance, you have switched to No. 1 with Ctrl+Alt+F1, you should be able to switch back to the X screen with Alt+F7.
Once the boot process has been completed, and you have X running, and you switch to F1 with Ctrl+ALt+F1, you should see a login prompt. You can then login as root or as any other user. Once you are down to the "virtual console" level (1-6) you can switch between them with Alt+Fn (n=1 or 2 or 3 ... or 6) and you should see a similar login prompt on each of them. As stated, Alt+F7 gets you to the console on which X is being displayed.
It is possible to run two or more instances of X simultaneously. The initial one will be on No. 7, but by using a "display" option in startx (executed after logging in on one of the 1-6) you can start one in No. 8, No. 9, ... The default X display is :0; other would be :1, :2, ... so with one already running in :0 = F7 you could use 'startx ... -- :1 ...' to start another one in :1 = F8. You would switch from one X display to another with Ctrl+Alt+Fn. You might want to do this if you wanted to have two different display managers running, or if you wanted to be logged in as two different users both running X. However, fancy footwork like this may not run too well on low-power machines! (though I have done it quite successfuly in 64MB RAM ... ).
I did some digging on the net and it is possible to reconfigure x, but it doesnt seem to work.
That is something that has to be done with care -- and knowing your way round X!
I am booting into Recovery Mode and getting a prompt up.
I tried dkpg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, but it did not do anything. I thought it was supposed to bring up a menu so you can pick option for your graphics card/monitor settings.
I did also try dkpg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg, but that did nothing either.
I would really like to resolve this. I installed Linux Mint on a Toshiba Satellite Pro A10 with integrated Intel graphics and a 15" monitor running at 1024x768. The ThinkPad has Silicon Motion graphics chip (which I know works in Linux) and a 10"monitor running 800x600, so it must be a driver and res issue.
I strongly suspect that is the case (though not able to suggest anything to deal with it). You installed Linux on the hard drive by putting this into a different machine. I thihnk what probably happened is that it autodetected the hardware on the other machine and wrote the X config files accordingly. These then were not right when you put the disk back in its original machine.
Sorry I don't know how to try to deal with this -- though hopefully others will! Ted.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I do dual boot with Windows XP, so if it is possible to edit any files on the linux partition via Windows that could be an option.
Simon
Simon Royal
--- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 240X running Windows 2000 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4.
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2010 00:28:36 +0100 Subject: Re: [ALUG] Mint Problems From: martin@antibodymx.net To: simonroyal@live.co.uk CC: main@lists.alug.org.uk
On Thu, August 5, 2010 18:02, Simon Royal wrote:
This stays on the screen. Every 20 seconds the whole screen goes black then the writing comes back.
It doesnt get any further than this.
That will be your display manager trying to start X, failing for some reason, and then trying to start it again.
Hop on to a virtual console, stop the display manager, then start X manually as root to see what the problem is. Most likely you'll need to change the graphics driver.
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