[UCLA-LUG] booting and video problems

[witten@linux.ucla.edu]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2000 at 02:02:51PM -0800, Kevin Wada wrote:
>      I had linux installed at the install fest last week and a couple
>      problems weren't able to be resolved. When I boot up, the computer is
>      supposed to ask whether to boot win 98 or linux. However, after linux
>      was installed this never happened because lilo (i think that's what
>      it's called) wasn't installed properly. In order to get into linux
>      now i must boot up win 98, shut down into ms dos mode, and load linux
>      through dos. This is a pain and i was hoping there is someway i can
>      get the computer to prompt me at boot up which OS to load.

If I recall correctly, your computer did not like LILO (in other words, LILO
wouldn't install on it), so we had to resort to the "load Linux via DOS"
method. Another approach you could take is loading Linux via a boot floppy.
Try the command "mkbootdisk" as root.

>      Also, when i boot win 98 a strange screen appears that says Compaq
>      Quick Restore: Ready to format first hard drive petitions. I just
>      have to hit escape to get past the screen but it scares me every time
>      i see it because i think it's going to reformat my hard drive if i
>      accidently push the wrong button one day. This screen started
>      appearing after linux was installed so please tell me if u know what
>      i should do.

This screen shows up because some Linux information is residing on the first
partition of your harddisk, and your Compaq BIOS thinks that the disk is
unformatted because of that.

I think that you can remove this Linux boot information and rely solely on a
boot floppy that you make. Who was working on this system at the install
fest? Will LILO on a boot floppy boot this system if there's no boot info on
the first partition of the disk? Or, maybe there's a way to disable the
Compaq BIOS warning screen.

>      I was told at the install fest that my video adapter is
>      not supported in the version of linux that was installed. I have an
>      Intel 810 chipset on my motherboard that acts as the video card. How
>      do i install the proper drivers for it so i can get my resolution
>      past 640 x 480.

This chipset is supported, but only in the newest version of XFree86. You
can probably grab XFree86 version 3.3.6 from the beta of Red Hat 6.2,
available here:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat-6.2beta/i386/RedHat/RPMS/

Just download the XFree86*.rpm files and then run:
rpm -Fvh *.rpm

This will upgrade all the XFree86 packages that you have installed. Then,
run Xconfigurator and your Intel video chipset should work.

>     I also can't connect to the internet when in linux. I guess my network
>     card also doesn't have the right drivers or something.

What network card (brand and model) is it?

>     However, my biggest complaint is that linux is slow! My gawd, it takes
>     at least 20 seconds to load minesweeper and over a minute to load
>     netscape! I know its got to be better than this but right now i'm
>     really unimpressed. I'm sure it's not running optimally since my
>     configuration is so crappy right now but its speed as of now is
>     terrible.

This slowness is very likely related to your video chipset. The 810 is one
of those onboard video chips that shares its RAM with the system RAM (unlike
most video cards, which have their own separate video RAM). Drivers that do
not take this into account, such as the generic video driver you're probably
using now, make the system perform really poorly.

>     Any help would be greatly appreciated. I really want to like linux but
>     right now it's ugly and slow and a pain to load up! I wasn't able to
>     go to the newbie night either so i'm really screwed as to knowing how
>     to use this OS. Sorry this e-mail is so long but i really need help.

I hope you can get at least some of these problems resolved. We have a lot
of weird hardware brought to install fests and I know how frustrating it can
be to have hardware that Linux doesn't support well. But with a new video
driver and a boot floppy, your Linux experiences may improve.

If you do get too frustrated with all this and want to delete Linux at any
point, let us know and we can help you with doing that. But I think that you
have a very good chance of getting a fully-functional Linux system.

>                                          Thanks in advance,
>                                          Kevin

-- 
Dan Helfman
UCLA Linux Users Group: http://www.linux.ucla.edu
My GnuPG key: http://torsion.org/witten/public-key.txt