Arch Linux

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

No GUI

Hello everyone,
This is my first post here,i'm currently using Ubuntu Linux for quite some time now,one day felt as if needed to try something new so d/w a iso of arch 0.7.2 gimmick,the installation went fine,i chose to install the default base packages as well as the X11 packages,when i tried to install gave me a dependency error n had to remove two files from the X11 packages,then all went fine n when i rebooted after the installation finished,it dropped in to command line,when i tried to start x server using 'startx' command i got a box moving all over my monitor saying 'sync out of range'.any idea what this error message is n how i can sort it out,im not a linux god but im willing to learn.

Thanks in advance,
Rajiv Nair.

dtw

Forum Fellow

From: UK

Registered: 2004-08-03

Posts: 4,439

Website

Re: No GUI

Sounds like you have not configured /etc/X11/xorg.conf - you need to do that. xorg.conf

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

Re: No GUI

ohhhh.......  i havent configured anything,i thought the default values might work,it was so given in the Arch Installation guide.
So what all files do i need to manualy configure other than xorg.conf ??I'm using Intel 82845GLAD motherboard.

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: No GUI

you may want to install your video card's drivers as well, if not already done, and configure you xorg.conf accordingly.

welcome btw !

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what goes up must come down

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

Re: No GUI

i dont have any drivers except for a 4 month old dri snapshot of intel i810 driver,will that do?

sebcactus

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2005-01-27

Posts: 277

Re: No GUI

pacman -S xf86-video-i810 should install your driver

(pacman -Ss xf86-video to see the other free drivers available)

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

Re: No GUI

i'm off to install it once again

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

Re: No GUI

one more thing,how will i know whether my ethernet card has been configured correctly coz i havent changed any of my configuration files whle installing and also is 'pppoeconf' the command to connect to internet thru dsl/broadband?

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

Re: No GUI

OR will i have to do pppoe-setup,*-start and *-stop since its using rp-ppoe?

sebcactus

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2005-01-27

Posts: 277

Re: No GUI

You should have a look at the WiKi. There is a lot of information there. For example:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PPP … _with_pppd

brazzmonkey

Member

From: between keyboard and chair

Registered: 2006-03-16

Posts: 818

Re: No GUI

wiki's your friend !

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what goes up must come down

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

Re: No GUI

still no luck,even though i dont get the 'sync out of range' message but whever i use 'startx' all i get is 2 terminals named login n xterm n one clock in the upper right hand corner,all in bad graphics.any idea as what might be going wrong?

Cerebral

Forum Fellow

From: Waterloo, ON, CA

Registered: 2005-04-08

Posts: 3,108

Website

Re: No GUI

Nothing is going wrong - that's the default window manager for Xorg (TWM I believe) - it's how it's supposed to look.

If you want to use a different WM or Desktop Envrionment, you need to edit the ~/.xinitrc file

dtw

Forum Fellow

From: UK

Registered: 2004-08-03

Posts: 4,439

Website

Re: No GUI

Ubuntu - the doom of user-based configuration!

fxsti01

Member

From: Midwest

Registered: 2006-08-23

Posts: 17

Re: No GUI

Here is what I ran thru, take it or leave it,
Ran thru the install again, cfdisk, etc, setup partitions, etc.,
when installing the packages on the install screens only choose base and editors. Choose nano for the editor, unless you have a preference with vi. Go thru each config file and write out, crtl o, crtl x, even if you don't change anything in them. Install kernel, bootloader, etc, exit setup, reboot.

   Log in as root, passwd, useradd -m -s /bin/bash username wheel audio, passwd.  Make sure your network is up and running, ifconfig, you only need pppoe if you are using dsl, not sure about dialup. Pacman -Syu, pacman -S kde (gnome, xfce, etc.). Pacman -S xorg, pacman -S hwd, xorgconfig, (you will have to google your video card's Horizontal and Vertical ranges), if not sure about video card choose 0 for Vesa(good general choice). Startx, if it does not come up you can always try Xorg -configure to let hwd auto config it for you.

   Once in kde (or gnome), I added hwd and kdm to the daemons list in the rc.conf file to boot into kde by default.  When I edited the inittab and .xinitrc files would boot up into kde fine, but when hitting log out would dump me back out into a console, had to manually issue shutdown command.  It's an older laptop, tends to overheat after about 5 hours.

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: No GUI

I added hwd

It is highly highly recommended to never use hwd at all - using udev through MOD_AUTOLOAD is superior, and even hwd's original dev agrees it should be used in place of hwd.

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http://phraktured.net

dtw

Forum Fellow

From: UK

Registered: 2004-08-03

Posts: 4,439

Website

Re: No GUI

You can still use hwd to do an xorg config though, eh?

fxsti01

Member

From: Midwest

Registered: 2006-08-23

Posts: 17

Re: No GUI

phrakture wrote:
highly highly recommended to never use hwd at all...

um, ok thanks, the Xorg wiki page needs to be updated then.

stonecrest

Member

From: Boulder

Registered: 2005-01-22

Posts: 1,190

Re: No GUI

um, ok thanks, I will now go and update the Xorg wiki page then

Fixed

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I am a gated community.

fxsti01

Member

From: Midwest

Registered: 2006-08-23

Posts: 17

Re: No GUI

I'll let someone more knowledgeable of Arch update the page than myself.

So hwd is not used anymore?  Udev is better?

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

Re: No GUI

Thank you to y'all people,u guys just rock,its bbye to ubuntu,it seems like im going to be around here for a very long time.

oops... but i have already used hwd,what to do ?

Sigi

Member

From: Thurgau, Switzerland

Registered: 2005-09-22

Posts: 1,131

Re: No GUI

If your xorg-server is up and running (and working the way you want it to) - don't touch anything ;-)

If it's all working but you want to improve something, be sure to backup your "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" before doing so.
Here are some sample xorg.conf files

(I don't have to tell you what to do if nothing works at all, you've already written about TWM IIRC)

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Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch.

RajivNair

Member

From: Mumbai,India

Registered: 2006-06-17

Posts: 40

Re: No GUI

Everythings up and running fine(Internet Graphics n Audio).Ive got a problem with direct rendering which i am going to post in the relevant forum,don't u guys think that Arch developers should be putting up Gnome or Kde or atleast XFCE as the default WM,i got scared looking at TWM n i hadn't ever even heard of such a thing.

Sigi

Member

From: Thurgau, Switzerland

Registered: 2005-09-22

Posts: 1,131

Re: No GUI

Arch Developers don't patch the packages they provide too much. Most of the preferences/configurations of a package are similar to those provided in the source of the native/vanilla package. TWM was the choice of the xorg devs (-> no reason to blame the arch devs for anything)

This wasn't meant to sound that aggressive, please forgive me ;-)

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Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch.

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: No GUI

Everythings up and running fine(Internet Graphics n Audio).Ive got a problem with direct rendering which i am going to post in the relevant forum,don't u guys think that Arch developers should be putting up Gnome or Kde or atleast XFCE as the default WM,i got scared looking at TWM n i hadn't ever even heard of such a thing.

Arch will never come with a default WM. The main disadvantage of a default WM is that if you don't like it and want to remove it,  you need to figure out what packages have been installed on your hard drive. One of the advantage of Arch is customizability. The install CD only installs the minimum amount of packages to get a working system. At that point, it's up to the user to decide what he wants to do with his system. If the system is a web server, then he installs apache then he's pretty much all setup. If it's a workstation, he installs xorg and the WM he wants.
These might be a good read:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchLinux

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way