Graphics all screwed up after installation?

theProphecy

Hi.
I am having some trouble. I have just finished installing Gentoo Linux on my notebook, and when i restarted after finishing, the graphics of Grub and Gentoo was all screwed up.
I have choosen to make a dual boot with Grub, so i have both Gentoo and Windows XP on my machine.

When i restarted the machine after finishin installing, it first started Grub, but no graphics would show. It just waited the timeout that i have given it in /boot/grub/grub.conf and chose the default, so Grub is working fine, but it cannot do graphics for some reason.
If i then in Grub choose to boot up Gentoo, the graphics get real screwed up, it does show some text, but it is if is showing to charachters on top of each other over the whoole screen.

I followed the 'Gentoo Linux 1.4 Installation Guide' for installing, just made a few changes with partitions to get Dual boot.
I choose the gentoo-sources kernel ( kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r8 )
I also emerged the 'Accelerated Nvidia graphics for XFree86' ( emerge -k nvidia-kernel ) since it is a Nvidia graphics card in my machine.
I started from a stage 2 tarball, and used genkernel to compile my kernel.
I choose Grub as bootloader, and installed on the MBR ( and i have made the bootdisk )

As i said earlier i am on a Notebook, here is some specifications:
1,6GHz P4m
640mb DDR
32mb GeForce 4-440 GO
And some other stuff...

I dunno if it is because Gentoo cannot find all of my hardware, but when i used the Live CD, the network card worked fine, no problems with graphics either.

I am very new to Linux, so some help would be very very appreciated.

It would be very sad if i would have to reinstall the whole thing one more time.

PatG · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 63 Location: texas

I had problems with an old S3 sound card after the initial install. The screen was generally unreadable starting at the end of the boot process. There were some error showing on boot such as

PCI: Failed to allocate resource 7 ....

Here is my post on this problem:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=100409

Do you see any errors when you boot? If so pull all unnecessary cards and see if ou can get the system to at least boot up with good video. Then work from there to determine the problem.

theProphecy · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 6:29 am Post subject:

Im afraid i can't take any cards out of it, because its a notebook, and i can only take out the flobby...
But i'll look at your post, to see if i can fix the problem.

PatG · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 63 Location: texas

theProphecy · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 7:07 am Post subject:

Right...

I'll just write some more specific info then... Good idea. Well i have a 16 page long description of my system

But i think i'll just take the most important stuff.

Its a notebook ( :wink:

), Dell Inspiron 8200
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) pc
1,6GHz Pentium 4 Mobile
640mb DDR ram
32mb GeForce 4-440 GO
cd-rom: TEAC CD-224E
30GB hdd Toshiba MK3018GAS
IDE ATA/ATAPI controller: Intel(r) 82801CAM Ultra ATA Storage Controller-248A
modem: Actiontec MD56ORD V90 MDC Modem
Audio: Intel(r) 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller
network: 3Com 3C920 Integrated Fast Ethernet Controller (3C905C-TX Compa
IEE 1394 Bus host controller: Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Infrared: SMC IrCC - Fast Infrared Port

Well that is about it... Just ask if i left out something!

Hope that this maybe can help somebody to help me..

theProphecy · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 7:24 am Post subject:

Okay... I got Gentoo Linux Working now...
I edited the grub.conf with vga=xxx
eksample:
kernel (hd0,0)... vga=795

When i then load up again, at first the graphics is messed up, then it prints:
"You passed an undefindes mode number"
"Press <RETURN> to see video modes available..."
Then first i enter scan, and the the screen goes black for a while, and then gets back with good graphics. The promt is still there, so i just choose one, and the graphics keeps on working...
But its still a problem. So what do i do?

theProphecy · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 7:40 am Post subject:

Now i got it working... I used another VGA setting... But now i can see that there are errors. Here is a print:
* Calculating module dependencies
modprobe: Note: /etc/modules.conf is more recent than /lib/modules/2.4.20-gentoo-r8/modules.dep
modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module mousedev
* Checking all filesystems...
modprobe: Can't locate module /dev/BOOT
modprobe: Can't locate module /dev/BOOT
modprobe: Can't locate module /dev/BOOT
modprobe: Can't locate module /dev/BOOT
modprobe: Can't locate module /dev/BOOT
fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/BOOT
/dev/BOOT:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap of ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

* Fsck could not correct all errors, manual repair needed

Give root password for maintenance

Can anybody maybe help me a little?

thadood · n00b Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 10

eh... looks like you didn't set your fstab correctly.

theProphecy · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 8:23 am Post subject:

Your right... It seems i didn't save it under installation, or something... But i have changed it now... But still having problems with the system:
/dev/hda6 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
/dev/hda6: 32/10040 files (0.0% non-contiguous), 4548/40131 blocks
* Fsck could not correct all erros, manual repair needed

/dev/hda6 is my boot drive (dual booting)... What seems to be the problem now?

thadood · n00b Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 10

You might not have dismounted the bootable partition when you rebooted after your install. It should ask you to login to a single-user mode or something of the sort. Run fdisk /dev/hda6, and see if you can manually fix anything.

theProphecy · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 8:34 am Post subject:

YAY... That seemed to do the trick...

I know i have a lot of questions, sorry

But at load it gets to:
* Starting local...

Thens hangs for a long time, and then promts the login screen... Can't this time be comprimissed? So that it wont stay there for the 65seconds it took?

Pete_Keller · Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2003 1:53 pm Post subject:

theProphecy,

1. Are you still having graphics issues?

2. if you type