[loudman]

Just installed Suse 10 on an old computer I found lying around at work (Compaq, P3, 256 ram). It all installed fine, now I've come to boot it up. It goes through all the startup routine (starting processes, booting drivers etc) then gives me the message:

"Failed to start the X Server (your graphical interface). It is likely that it is not set up correctly. Would you like to view the X server output to diagnose the problem.?"

Been through the Suse help manual, and looked at x.org foundation, tried all the solutions I've found on them and had no luck.
Any ideas here?

Cheeeeeeers

[tomdkat]

Find out what kind of video card is in the machine and see if X has built-in drivers for it or not. You can try configuring X to use a VGA or VESA generic driver and run @ 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution until you can get a driver optimized for your video card.

Post the make/model of your video card here, if possible.

Peace...

[loudman]

Originally Posted by tomdkat

Find out what kind of video card is in the machine and see if X has built-in drivers for it or not. You can try configuring X to use a VGA or VESA generic driver and run @ 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution until you can get a driver optimized for your video card.

Post the make/model of your video card here, if possible.

Peace...

It has an Intel i740 built in, however I've just plugged an S3 Tri64 into the PCI slot and still having the same problem.
I tried getting X to configure itself using the x -configure command. When I test that configuration I get a screen with an X cursor in the middle, but can't do anything. If i reboot I get the same message I had before. How do I configure it to use the generic driver?

[engti]

when you get to GRUB, choose the Failsafe boot option.

when you get to the prompt, login.

type in the following

su vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf (be carefull, get the case right)

scroll down to device;

look for

driver = "(mine is nvidia, yours should be something like intel or ixxx)"

tap insert.
replace the bit within quotes with "vesa".
type ":", you get to a promt type "wq" to save then exit.

Restart the comp and boot in normally, you should be able to see your display now.

Good luck.

[tomdkat]

Thanks for the info, engti.

I'm not a X.org user but here is doc from the latest version of XFree86 (4.6.0), which talks about video card support for adapters based on the i740 chipset:

http://xfree86.org/current/i740.html

If you're able to get X running using engti's info above, you can find out how to get the appropriate driver configured.

Peace...