Problem booting to GUI

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mrushton
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Problem booting to GUI

Post#1 by mrushton » 28 Mar 2014, 20:02

OK, I am having a problem when I try to boot to the GUI. (I see the character based stuff fine)

First let me say I have a SIS video on this old Laptop, AMD Turion 64 CPU (more like a celeron in performance) about 1GM memory (some shared by the video adapter)

I did see this in the Faq :

Porteus hangs during xorg/GUI initialization 'starting X11' - how can I fix it?

Try to add the 'vmalloc=256MB' cheatcode to your /boot/porteus.cfg file under the mode you boot into. If the error still exists, please post a bug report on the Porteus forum in the relevant section.


I am running off a live CD ... how am I supposed to do this ? Might this solve my problem ? I could probably boot in the character mode just fine.

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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#2 by brokenman » 28 Mar 2014, 20:06

When you reach the boot menu, hit the TAB button which will allow you to append cheat codes. Let us know how this goes.
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fanthom
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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#3 by fanthom » 28 Mar 2014, 22:00

@mrushton
please boot to text mode and generate 'psinfo' report then upload somewhere and link here.
i see rather small chance with SIS VGA but we may try....
Please add [Solved] to your thread title if the solution was found.

mrushton
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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#4 by mrushton » 29 Mar 2014, 13:30

did not work ... These are the options I used when i built my ISO

32 bit
gui
lxde
Chrome
Libre Office
Open Source Drivers

I think the issue is the SIS card ... later I will try to generate that report.

What I am looking for is a Windows XP replacement on this old laptop. It seems to boil down to support for the video and using a lightweight linux .... I could not get any Linux Mint to work ... I got Puppy Linux to work .... I had a version of Debian work .... i was running them all as a live DVD or CD.

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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#5 by mrushton » 30 Mar 2014, 02:33

hmmm , how can I copy a file to a USB drive ? I can not figure out what device it is ... I am in text mode ... I was able to run that Psinfo command .... it gives a lot of information but I could not copy it over to my main computer.

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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#6 by francois » 30 Mar 2014, 12:57

To find the name of your partitions including usb key, in cli mode:

Code: Select all

root@porteus:/var/abs/core/nano/pkg# fdisk -l
sdax are hdd
sdbx, sdcx, sddx, etc. are external or usb.

They are expressed as /dev, you should look for /mnt/sdxy.
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mrushton
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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#7 by mrushton » 30 Mar 2014, 17:29

Here a the URL to my psinfo :

http://nepa.railfan.net/psinfo.txt

There was a problem w/ the first USB drive I tried to use and it did not work right. :x I was able to use another one to copy the file.

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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#8 by francois » 30 Mar 2014, 22:56

There might be a long (not so long shot on this one, if you really want to work with porteus, going thru the archlinux pasture. See:
https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extr ... video-sis/

We have an experimental project where we can build packages on porteus coming from archlinux, this is VicktorNova's Porteus AUR:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php? ... 058#p21519

If you are interested enough and patient, I will try to build the module for you.

But before, we will wait fanthom's proposition. He is your man, unless brokenman comes out with some fancy trick. :wink:
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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#9 by fanthom » 30 Mar 2014, 23:59

could you generate xorg.conf with 'X -configure' command then move it from /root/xorg.conf-new (or similar) to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and run 'startx' command.
if screen hangs then please kill the X server with ctrl+alt+backspace or switch to VT1 with ctrl+alt+F1.

please generate new raport with 'psinfo' and upload again.
thanks
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mrushton
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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#10 by mrushton » 31 Mar 2014, 03:16

Maybe I could try the ArchLinux driver for the SIS hardware.

I tried doing the X -configure and I could not get it to run right ... I don't know enough about the command to run it right I guess.

I am really astounded by how fast Porteus boots ... If I could get it to run on my machine I would use it.

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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#11 by francois » 31 Mar 2014, 09:51

Please try fanthom's solution first. This is really the simplest solution for now. :wink:

In command line, to move to the appropriate directory and copy the appropriate files (do not write the stuff in parenthesis, these are explanations):

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root@porteus:~# cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old (backup of the old xorg.conf) 
root@porteus:~# cd /root (to change to the root dir)
root@porteus:~# ls (list files and directories)
14.03.26  Desktop/  Downloads/  Pictures/  usm/ (you might have other files too)
root@porteus:~# cp xorg.conf-new  /etc/X11/xorg.conf (copy the new  xorg.conf generated file where it belongs) 
root@porteus:~# startx (try to reboot in X environment)
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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#12 by mrushton » 31 Mar 2014, 14:03

OK ... let me try fanthom's soloution. Tonight when i get home. Thanks for the help. I have not really worked with the x-windows system much, just character based Unix and Linux.

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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#13 by mrushton » 01 Apr 2014, 20:51

I was unable to issue these commands.

etc/X11 did not exist ... I was trying to run the Linux from a LiveCD. I am not sure if this would be there or on an installed filesystem.

Anyway, when I get a chance I will try to run this on another machine, to see how it works.

Thanks for everyone's help.

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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#14 by francois » 04 Apr 2014, 02:53

I will see this weekend if I cannot get the driver from archlinux thru porteus/aur.

Sorry, I was too busy in the last days.
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Re: Problem booting to GUI

Post#15 by francois » 05 Apr 2014, 20:10

So to have the crucial information at hand, here is the archlinux on SIS video:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xf86-video-sis

Your driver characteristics:

Code: Select all

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter [1039:6330]
	Subsystem: Uniwill Computer Corp Device [1584:5043]
The porteus-aur threads:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=3058
https://github.com/ViktorNova/porteus-aur

I have tried building the xf86-video-sis package. It would not build. There are are additonal dependencies that have to be built it seems.

Maybe you can have a look at it yourself. I am not ready for now to spend the rest of the day on it. If you clearly manifest your interest, I could do it later.

Cheers.with
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