--- In [email protected], Robert C Wittig
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Gary wrote:
> > Well, I did something stupid and utterly ruined my Fedora 7 upgrade
> > over Core 3, sooooo, I did a fresh F7 install from scratch.
> >
> > The install process always seems to have trouble with X server "can't
> > find display :1" ; when installed over FC3, F7's first boot had to
> > reconfigure the graphics from scratch. This is because my motherboard
> > has an onboard VGA that I ignore in favor of a modestly superior PCI
> > video card.
> >
> > I don't understand why it can't find a GUI, I installed the packages
> > for KDE and XFCE in addition to the default Gnome!!! And I don't know
> > how to start any of them manually from the hostname login!
> Try typing the command 'startx' from the command prompt. It should
> start your graphical X-Windows platform, and from there, whichever
> Desktop Manager is default.
>
> If you ever have a serious problem with X-Windows, you might be happy
> that you are able to just boot into the graphical prompt, and fix the
> problem manually.
>
Good advice, but regrettably I read it a little too late -- already
reinstalled from scratch. Maybe it will save someone else some time,
though.
The issue was that F7's install process was in fact keying off of the
FIRST video adapter it found -- the motherboard's -- rather than the
one specified as preferred in BIOS -- the PCI card. That's why --
when it showed any video at all -- it couldn't start the X server
without having to *immediately* reconfigure from scratch.
Fedora Core 3 went directly to the BIOS-preferred adapter.
Once F7 sucessfully installed, everything was fine. I thought about
running the F7 install as dual-head (which F7 supports), but ended up
removing the PCI card altogether; curiously (and wonderfully!) the
onboard video adapter is behaving better under Fedora than it was
under Win98, thus obviating the need for the PCI adapter.
Oh, the 'stupid' thing I did? Having an ext2-formatted zipdisk in the
drive when I did the F7 install. Which was not bad in and of itself,
but led me to make some bad decisions.
Under Fedora Core 3, my onboard IDE HD was /dev/hda, and my PCI-card
SCSI-controler zipdrive was /dev/sda4. Somehow, under F7, the IDE
drive became "/sda" and my zipdrive became "/sdb". I didn't realize
it had changed that way! So, when the install asked me what drive I
wanted to use, I told it /sdb because I 'knew' that /sda was my
zip100, and I didn't want that! :-/
So, now my zip100 was *intimately* involved in system operations,
being the repository of /boot, /proc, and several other critical
partitions. As such, it was being accessed frequently, even though I
*thought* I wasn't doing anything with it, and COULD NOT be ejected,
which I was extremely suspicious of.
Now we're getting to the actual mistake(s) I made: (1) I thought that
the zip100 disk had gotten messed up somehow. (2) To clean it up and
start over, I issued "su -c mke2fs -F /dev/sda". Note the -F "force"
parameter...
Well, you can guess what effect THAT had! :facepalms:
But, I'm good now. Everything's up and running. I *like* F7!!!
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