Howdy! I am attempting to install Redhat Linux on a stripped down NEC Ready 340T (i.e. it no longer has the original display, keyboard, or touchpad) hooked up to a Gateway EV500 monitor, a 101-key keyboard, and a 3-button serial mouse. Which version? Well, that's a part of the problem...
Some number of months ago, I had installed 7.0 on the machine without, as I recall anyway, too much difficulty. Recently, I decided to use the machine as an Internet gateway/firewall for an internal network. So I bought a second PCMCIA card and started reading up on using ipchains. My research also brought me across docs on iptables, and it seemed to me that using the latter would be better for myself, as the overall architecture of that system seems simpler (and thus easier to learn for a rookie). But of course, 7.0 doesn't have iptables. After reading reviews of more recent distributions (some proclaiming 7.3 to be "the most complete" Redhat version ever), I decided to just go ahead and install 7.3. That's where my problems began. As far as I could tell, everything during the install went fine. I did not, however, test the video config (oops), but thankfully I set the machine to start in text mode. After booting up and logging in, when I'd try to "startx" the screen would flash and then the monitor would bring up something indicating that the refresh rate was beyond my monitor's range (81.2kHz by 181Hz, well outside of the 70kHz / 120Hz limits). I tried to configure X using "setup" to no avail...I tried probing, entering the video info manually, etc...No change. At that point I wondered if maybe I had done something differently when I originally installed 7.0 (on which X windows worked just fine). "One way to find out" I say, and re-install 7.0. No, I hadn't done anything differntly. X again worked fine after a 7.0 install. I ran Xconfigurator through linuxconf (um...can someone explain to me why they removed this by 7.3? it's great for rookies like myself...) and probed the card here as well, noticing a crucial difference between the way 7.0 and 7.3 recognized my card. Both found the same "Entry" (Neomagic Corp. | NM2160...) and "XFree4 driver" (neomagic), but while 7.0 listed the "X Server" as "XF86_SVGA", 7.3 listed the X Server as "None"! So after doing some more reading, this time about XFree86 and the various distros, I figured the easy solution might be to regress my install to the version most likely to have retained the 7.0 X install fashion but having iptables -- 7.1. So I installed 7.1. Now...The graphical install of 7.1 does not work on the machine for some reason. So I did the text install. And after testing X during install I determined that it had the same problems as in 7.3. At this point, I decided to just accept that X would not work on my firewall and move on..."I can always log on from another computer anyway once it's up and running." HOWEVER...The text-based install does not allow you to dictate that the machine should start in TEXT mode. So, the machine starts in graphical (i.e. non-working X) mode. Agh!!! I'm quite sure the machine is not properly config'd to receive outside connections yet, but I can't change that without being able to get on the machine. I tried Ctrl-Alt-Backspace after the bootup to back out of the X server, but that only works momentarily (like, for 3 seconds) and then it tries to go back in (what the hell is THAT all about?). One more thing. I noticed during the 7.0 and 7.1 install that only Neomagic 128 and 256 were available video hardware choices (of course I choose the former while installing both), while in 7.3 there is also 128XD. I tried installing 7.3 with both 128 and 128XD to no help. Bottom line: What the hell do I do to fix this? At this point I'd actually like to stick with 7.1 b/c it has what I want (iptables) without taking up the space that 7.3 does (compare 775 MB with 1.25 GB, a big difference when working with 2.0 GB of drive space)...But 7.1 won't even startup in text-mode for me and is therefore currently unusable. (I tried interactive startup...INIT runlevel isn't part of it, unfortunately.) I would go for any solution that either allows me to install iptables on 7.0 easily (* see note at bottom *) OR to boot 7.1 to text and then set the proper X server OR, if necessary, to set the proper X server in 7.3. I guess in a worst case scenario I'll just re-install 7.3, suck up the lost space, and deal with config-ing the thing in text mode until I can log into it from a computer on the internal network, but I'd prefer not to have to do that, ya know? Thanks in advance for any help or advice. Hagn P.S. Oh yeah, the note at the bottom...I found what appears to be an iptables RPM for RH 7.0 at http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/netfilter-devel/2001-January/000324.html However, when I try to access the HTTP or FTP sites involved I'm told I don't have permission to access the appropriate folder! Grrrr! _______________________________________________ Redhat-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
