Hi, I've probably wrecked my system and will need to reformat and start over, but am hoping I'll be able to recover without. But I'm stuck - any advice appreciated (as you will see from below, I don't have much idea what I'm doing).
I had an old potato system. Problem 1: I tried to upgrade X to unstable (xserver-common, xlibs etc) (yes, I know, silly move). The first result was that xdm failed to start with 'Can't open RGB_DB'. I copied rgb.txt to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/; now I have xdm, xfs, windowmaker etc all running, but a completely blank screen. All the parameters for my video chipset (ATI Rage Pro) seem to have been set correctly. $REALSTARTUP is not quoted, though the symptoms sound similar. I can still get into console mode, where everything works ok. Problem 2: I thought the problem might be due to running an old kernel (2.2.17), since xlibs installation gave me a warning 'Kernel too old for Mesa DRI'. I attempted to install the 2.4.14-1 image. Rather than booting from the hard drive, I tried to create a boot floppy. I'm unable to boot from this, getting a kernel panic: 'VFS: Cannot open root device 'hdb3' or 03:43'. However, I can still boot from my old boot floppy using hdb3. Any suggestions? Thanks Graham
