[Linuxcommand-announce] [LinuxCommand.org: News And Rants] A "Command Line To The Rescue" Story

[William S. <bs...@pa...>]

As you may recall from my earlier review of my new Dell desktop, I
bought it to replace my previous Dell desktop, a Dimension 2400. Over
the last couple of weeks I have installed a couple of distributions on
my old system. First the Windows 7 Beta (the first installation of
Windows in my house since 1996), a sad story that I hope to write about
soon, and over the weekend I formatted over that horror and installed
Fedora 10.I've used a lot of Red Hat products over the years and I
favor it for administration, however, I have a growing fondness for
Ubuntu because it seems to deliver the best desktop user experience.
When it comes to Red Hat stuff though, I'm pretty expert at installing
it.Now I have to digress a bit and talk about a phenomenon I have
discovered about Linux. It is often useful to think about Linux as
though it were a living thing. It's been said that Linux is based on
evolution, not "intelligent design." This means that Linux evolves
naturally in a series of fits and starts, rather than being the result
of some grand plan. This is the opposite of proprietary software, which
(if done properly) is the result of careful planning.What this means is
that sometimes a subsystem in Linux goes away and is replaced by
another re-written replacement that addresses a need. And, of course,
programmers prefer to re-write code rather than maintain old code.
Anyway, this periodic "churn" of code is natural to the process.The
problem is that sometimes things that worked in previous versions stop
working in the new versions. This is fairly common Linux, and it's
perhaps its most off putting characteristic.One case in point is the
display driver for Intel integrated graphics chips. Admittedly, some of
these chips really suck, especially the earlier ones. The new ones are
better and also get official driver support from Intel. Over the last
year or so, Linux distributions have been deploying the new "intel"
driver replacing the previous "i810" driver. The new driver is in every
way much better than the old driver, except it doesn't like the older
chips very much.This brings us back to my Dimension 2400, which, as you
may have guessed by now, uses one of the old chips.So I pop the Fedora
10 install DVD into the drive and reboot the machine. The installer
starts and gets to the first graphical install screen and completely
hangs. Dead, inert. It doesn't look like I'll be doing a graphical
install this time.I power-cycle the machine and just as the DVD starts
to boot, i press the escape key and get:boot:Wonderful! A boot prompt.
Now I know what to do. I enter:boot: linux textwhich instructs the boot
loader to boot the kernel called "linux" and pass the argument "text"
to the system. On a Red Hat style systems this will invoke the text
mode installer. I answer all the prompts and the install gets underway.
While I have some time to kill, I Google for a way to get the graphics
working again. From my search, I determine that the problem isn't so
much the new driver but rather that, by default, the new driver uses a
new "acceleration method" called "EXA" rather than the previous method
called "XAA". Making a one line change to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file
will cause X to revert to the old method and solve the problem.After
the installation is complete, I reboot the machine and it comes up in
text mode. This is caused by a configuration file called /etc/inittab
which contains a setting for the default run level, which is 3 for text
mode and 5 for graphical mode on Red Hat style systems. In text mode
you get a login screen:Login:I log in as root and create a personal
account for myself:useradd bshottspasswd bshottsAfter I create the
account and set the password, I press Alt-F2 to get to the second
virtual console. There I log in as bshotts and try to launch X. I do
this by entering the command:startxThe X server starts and almost gets
to the desktop before it chokes again. Looks like it's time to fix that
xorg.conf file. I restart the machine and and log in as root again. I
go looking around in the /etc/X11 directory and notice that there is no
xorg.conf file. This is because with modern X servers, the file is no
longer required, as all the configuration is done dynamically at
runtime which, in concept, is great when it works.Bummer.I think to
myself, "there must be some kind of configuration program for X," so I
start digging around in the man pages. I discover that the Xorg program
has an option called -configure that will create an xorg.conf file
based on the server's best guess of what the correct configuration
should be. You must be root to use this option so I give it a try:Xorg
-configureand it creates a file named xorg.conf.new in root's home
directory. I copy this file to /etc/X11 which is where X expects to
find it:cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.confNext, a little editing
with vi and I add one line to the "Device" section of the
file:Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"After saving the edited file, I login in
as bshotts and try the startx command again and low and behold, I have
a working desktop! I confirm that the graphics seem correct and log out
of GNOME. This returns me to the text console. Since I want the system
to work in graphical mode by default, I need to change the default run
level. I do this by returning to my root console session and editing
the /etc/inittab file. I change the last line to
read:id:5:initdefault:changing the "3" to a "5" to set the run level to
graphical. After saving the file I reboot the machine and everything
works. New installation successful.So what does all this teach us? It
teaches us that sometimes there is no substitute for a good command
line. A command line can work wonders. It teaches us that, with enough
digging around, most problems are solvable. And most of all, it teaches
us you should keep learning and never give up.Hope you had a good
weekend too!

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Posted By William Shotts to LinuxCommand.org: News And Rants at
1/26/2009 05:43:00 AM