The situation gets stranger and stranger. For
completeness, I have repeated the problem below. None
of the suggestions helped. Whether I used the boot
floppy or installation CD, I ended up with a blank
screen and frozen computer.
Then, for no sensible reason, I put Debian in the lilo
boot loader on my Mandrake partition. Booting with
lilo, I got into the Debian text mode. I then tried
the dpkg (etc) described below and could not find a
combination that worked.
Then, again for no reason, I attempted to boot from my
boot floppy. This time, I got to the Debian text mode.
Previously, the boot floppy just led to a blank screen
and a frozen computer.
Here is a possible clue. When I tried "startx", I
ended up with:
Fatal Server Error:
no screens found
>************************************************
>
>I attempted to install Woody version 3.0. Everything
>went smoothly until I tried to use it after the
>installation. All I get is a blank screen and a
frozen
>computer. I think that my problem is a video card
that
>linux does not like, S3 Pro-Savage KM133. Any
>suggestions as to how I can make things work. I
cannot
>use the text mode, therefore I cannpt change any
>files.
>
>
>
Does Ctrl-Alt-F2 not switch you to a workable
text-based console? From
there you should be able to repair whatever's wrong.
Otherwise you can, at the "boot:" prompt (assuming
you're using lilo
and
not grub, etc), enter "linux single" to boot into
single-user mode,
where you can then repair what's wrong.
Once at a text-based console, the first thing to do is
to disable the
automatic startup of X. You're probably using a
graphical session
manager, either xdm, wdm, kdm, or gdm. There are
several ways to do
this; probably the way I would do it is to temporarily
put the single
line "exit 0" as the first executable line in the
session manager
start-up script. This script will be in "/etc/init.d",
and will have a
symlink in "/etc/rc2.d". The script in "/etc/init.d"
will probably be
named "xdm", "wdm". "kdm". or "gdm". The script in
"/etc/rc2.d" will
have a "S" and a number in front of the script name,
like "S99kdm" or
"S98gdm". You can disable the graphical session for
the current boot
only by running this script with the "stop" flag, like
so:
"/etc/init.d/kdm stop" (which you'll want to do
_before_ adding "exit
0"
to the script).
Now run "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" and play
with the X
settings,
and then try starting X with "startx". Once you get a
working system,
you can remove the "exit 0" and then run the script
with the "start"
option and see if the graphical session manager (GUI
logon screen)
works.
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