I give up

Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

There comes a time in every man?s life, the time when the battle between you and Gentoo is decided not by wit, but by perseverance. You both enter the ring knowing only one will walk out. Today, I have lost. I can?t hack it. Tomorrow I?m going to fdisk my gentoo dist into eternity. Making it work has become an obsession, and the real world beckons me once again. Damn you Xfree86, and your hard locking my computer every time I launched thee. Damn you Radeon 9500 pro, for being a cheap good card, but a Radeon non-the-less. Damn you nForce2, for your nforceness. But most of all, damn you Wintendo XP, with all your GUI goodness, your direct x and ease of use.

Thank you community forums for the zillions of posts that answered my questions (without me even posting once!), but I?m just too dumb to make it all work.

I thought about posting my conf files, but I don?t know how to do that.

At least I tried

jonas_nilsson · Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 6:51 am Post subject:

I forgive you brother, for you may have lost this battle, but you have not lost the war. The easy road might be tempting - even for the most tempered UNIX gurus - but it is also a treacherous road. Wander into the misty forest of DOS-land now, but remember that it is never to late to return to the sacred havens of the open source community.
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Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
--Richard Feynman

dfuse · Guru Joined: 07 Apr 2003 Posts: 395 Location: Belgium

jlowell · Guru Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 389

Awfully sorry to hear of your discouragement, old man, wish things were a bit more cheery for you. I do think that there's an explanation of all this and I certainly wouldn't want to you to feel that every path toward a solution hadn't been explored before you walk away. The simple truth is that it is God that is punishing you for having aspired to a successful installation of Gentoo without your first having seen to, how shall we say, certain "issues" between the two of you. We here at church, of course, always insist on prayer before Linux. But if you must try things on your own, well .......

jlowell

Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

Only prayer? Here I was thinking I was supposed to slaughter a lamb...

I think the main reason is that I just really don't even know what i'm doing.

Someone from school suggested I try SuZe... Maybe I'll give that a one two punch.

jlowell · Guru Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 389

Frozensun,

hackerError · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2003 2:05 am Post subject: M A N D R A K E

FSCK SuSe... if gentoo isn't working, use Mandrake, its so simple... autodetects everything... *drool* and then you can just install portage on it

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That way when you insult them you're already a mile away and have their shoes.

Pete_Keller · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2003 2:20 am Post subject:

FrozenSun,
Have you tried knoppix? It is a bootable Linux CD that will allow you to learn linux, then when you are ready to try gentoo again, there are instructions on loading gentoo from within knoppix, allows you to play the games during the install.

Pete

P.S. Don't stay away, come back when you think you can absorb a little more info, Linux is like drinking from a firehose, lotta stuff in a little while.

Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

Your right. I guess it was a call of desperation. I can't seem to get Xfree86 to work. I can load it, I can set it up, but when I launch it, all it does is freeze my computer, and i can't do anything (no keyboard). So my question is this:

What should I do? I see people who have copied there config files onto the boards, but I don't know how to do that (I'm currently posting on wintendo xp)

when I do a /help on a command to see what it does, how do I pause the scrolling text?

jonas_nilsson · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2003 6:33 am Post subject:

To view text that just scrolls by, send the text through 'less' or 'more', for example like this:
'emerge --help | less'

Notice the '|'? it's a "pipe" that passes the output on to the standard input of in this case less.

To copy your config file, you could for example open the /etc/XF86Config (or is it /etc/X11/XF86Config?) in the editor nano, and copy the text with your mouse. Just highlight the text and then right click wherever you want to paste it (this requires gpm to be installed and up and running).
_________________
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
--Richard Feynman

Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

jlowell · Guru Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 389

I know this will probably send you out looking for a stuffed doll soft enough to receive the pins needed for the voodoo ceremony necessary to curse me, but I think you should clean off the appropriate portion of your disc and start all over again with a stage 1 install. Having already searched the forum extensively for answers, you know where to look for suspected solutions, but I would submit that you well may have matched the wrong fixes to the right problems when you installed the first time. As you have questions regarding the install, even the smallest ones, bring them here. As the process unfolds, people experienced with your hardware, or xfree or whatever will offer specific help. It's hard to say why it may be that X is freezing on you but if we review your installation with you as it is in progress, we'll be able to address that matter should it present itself again. Take it one step at a time and be patient. As to the matter of presenting your configuration files, should that become necessary, we can teach you how to do that too.

Let us know if we're needed.

jlowell

Pete_Keller · Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2003 4:01 pm Post subject:

Frozensun,

I had the same problem with my laptop, check your bios, do you have legacy usb support turned on? That is what caused my problem.

Also try commenting out (put a # in the first space of the line) for your mouse inputs in your xfree configuration file, then try to start Xfree, if the keyboard works, the problem is with the mouse.

Do you have a second computer? The way I was able to get this problem fixed was to have my desktop up and on IRC (http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/irc.xml) and was able to troubleshoot my laptop problem with a couple of guys in the hardware/laptop section.

Pete

mmealman · Guru Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Posts: 348 Location: Florida

Try Mandrake 9.2, it supposedly works very well out of the box and even supports the Radeon cards pretty well.

Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

selfless · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 40

jlowell · Guru Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 389

Frozensun,

Stu L Tissimus · Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2003 12:22 am Post subject:

Never give up, dude. Wanna know why?

I have installed Gentoo at least seventeen times on my desktop, and none of them have ever gotten Xfree to work properly. But I'm getting close.
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Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

Stu

I noticed you have nearly the exact same system as me.

Any advice with the epox or the radeon?

Stu L Tissimus · Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2003 2:18 am Post subject:

Hmmm... Well, let's see. For the EpoX, I think we ot kinda lucky. It's not one of the most annoying nForce2 mobos (but that's not saying much). Can you explain what's exactly wrong with it? ANd for the Radeon, I've never really gotten up to that stage yet... but there's a very nice guide somewhere on the forums.

G'luck!
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Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

Hey! I did it, I'm posting using linux! Hey wait, where is that warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment? Ohh yeah, thats right, I cheated. I'm running Morphix with KDE (live cd). I think I did this just to prove to myself that it can be done. Xfree86 can run on my computer, no matter what. I have definative proof! Now if only I could see the config file... I wonder where it would be...

I will be victorious :twisted:

edit: I found the xfree86 conf. Silly frozen, tricks are for kids.

Lews_Therin · l33t Joined: 03 Oct 2003 Posts: 657 Location: Banned

Have you tried using the special Radeon config utility, especially tailored for their cards? (it kicks ass and takes logs

). Boot into your partician and type

Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

Lews_Therin · l33t Joined: 03 Oct 2003 Posts: 657 Location: Banned

Well, if the conf works, it should still work when loaded onto your hd. Might as well try, so tell us if it works.

Frozensun · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 82

Hmm... I can't write to the hard drive. I only have read permisions with the disc.... I don't know how to give myself write permisions.