mickeyf
January 11th, 2009, 07:57 PM
I am fairly new to linux.
I have two machines on which I had been running Ubuntu 6.10. I upgraded the newer of the two to 8.10 – downloaded the CD image, burned a CD, ran through the install with no issues, everything works fine.
The other machine is older. It is not worth it for me to upgrade the bios, and I am not going to buy a newer machine. Anyway, the install failed – I don't recall the exact issues, but looking over the forum posts it sounded like trying the Xbuntu text based install would be a better bet. I did that, it apparently worked, then I installed gnome from the command line and tried to bring the system the rest of the way back up.
Under 6.10, I was able to use a screen resolution of 1024x768 on either machine. Under 8.10, the older machine won't do more than 800x600, usually 640x480, and mostly I am unable to get a gui at all.
The start up messages go by pretty quickly, but here's what I think I'm seeing that may be relevant:
“Bios age fails cutoff (2000)” - the bios on this box is 1999
“acpi-force is required to enable acpi”
“shpc_init cannot reserve mmio, upgrade bios”
finally:
“starting Gnome”, a few more messages then finally I get the command line login prompt. I ignore this. After a second the screen blinks. Another second, it blinks again, then gnome tries to start. I get a difficult to read error message box:
“frame buffer ??32 not supported by this chip set. Screens found but none have usable configuration”
click OK on that then another message box asking if I want to run in low graphics mode, reconfigure graphics, or use a backup configuration. I generally select “use low graphics”, but none of the choices give happy results....
then, “ stand by 1 minute while the display restarts”. Finally I get the gnome login screen, and log in. At this point either I'm up and running in a lower graphics mode than I want, or more often the screen goes blank and all I can do is go to a tty to work or to shut down.
Since this machine worked with a decent resolution under Ubuntu 6.10, I'm fairly certain it can be persuaded to work under 8.10, but I'm new enough to linux that I have no idea how to do this. As I said, I am not going to upgrade or replace the machine. Info on how to force the display to cooperate would be appreciated though.
Alternately, how to load a window manager other than gnome, that will allow me higher resolution?
TIA
mickey
I have two machines on which I had been running Ubuntu 6.10. I upgraded the newer of the two to 8.10 – downloaded the CD image, burned a CD, ran through the install with no issues, everything works fine.
The other machine is older. It is not worth it for me to upgrade the bios, and I am not going to buy a newer machine. Anyway, the install failed – I don't recall the exact issues, but looking over the forum posts it sounded like trying the Xbuntu text based install would be a better bet. I did that, it apparently worked, then I installed gnome from the command line and tried to bring the system the rest of the way back up.
Under 6.10, I was able to use a screen resolution of 1024x768 on either machine. Under 8.10, the older machine won't do more than 800x600, usually 640x480, and mostly I am unable to get a gui at all.
The start up messages go by pretty quickly, but here's what I think I'm seeing that may be relevant:
“Bios age fails cutoff (2000)” - the bios on this box is 1999
“acpi-force is required to enable acpi”
“shpc_init cannot reserve mmio, upgrade bios”
finally:
“starting Gnome”, a few more messages then finally I get the command line login prompt. I ignore this. After a second the screen blinks. Another second, it blinks again, then gnome tries to start. I get a difficult to read error message box:
“frame buffer ??32 not supported by this chip set. Screens found but none have usable configuration”
click OK on that then another message box asking if I want to run in low graphics mode, reconfigure graphics, or use a backup configuration. I generally select “use low graphics”, but none of the choices give happy results....
then, “ stand by 1 minute while the display restarts”. Finally I get the gnome login screen, and log in. At this point either I'm up and running in a lower graphics mode than I want, or more often the screen goes blank and all I can do is go to a tty to work or to shut down.
Since this machine worked with a decent resolution under Ubuntu 6.10, I'm fairly certain it can be persuaded to work under 8.10, but I'm new enough to linux that I have no idea how to do this. As I said, I am not going to upgrade or replace the machine. Info on how to force the display to cooperate would be appreciated though.
Alternately, how to load a window manager other than gnome, that will allow me higher resolution?
TIA
mickey