Problem booting to GUI

[mrushton]

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.

[brokenman]

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

[fanthom]

@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....

[mrushton]

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.

[mrushton]

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.

[francois]

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

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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.

[mrushton]

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. I was able to use another one to copy the file.

[francois]

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.

[fanthom]

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

[mrushton]

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.

[francois]

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

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)

[mrushton]

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.

[mrushton]

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.

[francois]

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.

[francois]

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:

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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