StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I installed Debian, and it's a fucking retard that makes you go through multiple hour sessions of installations because it's too buggy to install everything properly the first time. By it's own admission, in fact. Lol. Newbie-friendly distro my ass.

I try startx from the prompt but it fails - the screen attempts to change about 3 times, then it tells me the x server was killed. Whether it has anything to do with the japanese language support I put on it, I don't know. No indications of trouble when I was setting up my gui resolution and bpp.

Installation details~ 37 gig linux boot partition, 800 meg swap partition, 8 gig ntfs xp partition, some 38 gigs unpartitioned, if that's any help.

Some other distro could be in option in case this problem doesn't resolve itself.

Can you post the contents of /var/log/XFree86.0.log?

Crayz9000 wrote:Can you post the contents of /var/log/XFree86.0.log?

That'll take a while, but sure

(going to edit post when done)

How do I even open the thing?

I can navigate to it, but no command I use will display the contents or open it.

And how am I going to post all the content? I can't access the internet from Debian and need to boot into XP to do anything.

Anyway, try putting a floppy in and "mount /floppy; cp /var/log/XFree86.0.log /floppy/log.txt; umount /floppy", and open up log.txt under Wordpad under windows (since I'm assuming you are posting from a Windows machine, and don't feel like retyping shit). To look at it under Linux, type "less /var/log/XFree86.0.log", and to edit, replace "less" with "nano". Better yet, create a small shared partition formatted as FAT32, and tell me your partition config.

If it gets too hard, an "easy" installer is supposed to come out in a few months, or you can use knoppix to install Debian the "easy" way.

It would also help to know your video card.

I'll supply necessary config files if necessary (running a debian system).

I also suggest replacing the contents of your /etc/apt/sources.list file with this if you want anything that isn't a quarter decade old.

Also run "apt-get install aptitude", then run "aptitude" for a better interface for installing new stuff. Then from now on, run "aptitude install [program you want]" to install things, or run aptitude and look for it.

Uncomment the commented "#" lines above when you know what you are doing. For now it just connects to the "unstable"(AKA not 2 years obsolete) archive, the non-US archive for crypto stuff, and the marillat archive for stuff like mplayer.

As for internet (do this before installing anything), check /etc/network/interfaces, which should have lines looking like this which if aren't there, add it, and edit according to your internal IP address and such. Also type
"route add default gw [ip of router]", and your internet should be up (put it in an init script later). Type "apt-get elinks" to get a text mode browser.

Oh, and edit /etc/hostname to change computer name, and put that name in /etc/hosts after localhost on the same line.

Of course, do all this one at a time, in order of
get net running,
change /etc/apt/sources.conf
install aptitude
change hostname.
get X running.
get Mozilla running

report success/failure between each stage.

Oh, and get a linux book from the library or something, esp on command line usage. .

Fuck it. I'm wiping out Debian and using a newbier distro. Less doesn't open anything and the command is somehow missing, even though I witnessed its installation myself. Mount won't do anything for the floppy drive, which makes sense considering that it didn't consistently work in XP. Funny how Slackware was an even unfriendlier package yet didn't fuck itself up when I installed it

Sorry for costing you time with my problem, but I'm ready to break some furniture at the moment.

Try Fedora or Gentoo then, or even Lindows (Debian in a newbie friendly package) or a hard drive install of Knoppix..., in that order.

Pu-239 wrote:Try Fedora or Gentoo then, or even Lindows (Debian in a newbie friendly package) or a hard drive install of Knoppix..., in that order.

Fedora is Red Hat without the features of RH Enterprise, or an entirely new distro? Even after checking the Fedora site I'm not sure. I did Red Hat install once before. It was very smooth with no real difficulties. Only reason why I didn't keep the installation was because I only dedicated an 8 gig partition to FAT. Pity Linux won't write to NTFS.

About your problems viewing the logfile... everything in /var/log is restricted to viewing by only the superuser. In other words, you need to be root to copy or read the file.

Hamel wrote:

Pu-239 wrote:Try Fedora or Gentoo then, or even Lindows (Debian in a newbie friendly package) or a hard drive install of Knoppix..., in that order.

Fedora is Red Hat without the features of RH Enterprise, or an entirely new distro? Even after checking the Fedora site I'm not sure. I did Red Hat install once before. It was very smooth with no real difficulties. Only reason why I didn't keep the installation was because I only dedicated an 8 gig partition to FAT. Pity Linux won't write to NTFS.

It's the bleeding edge distro for regular users, and it has an APT clone for installation and updates.

I was assuming he was root all the time for configuration.

You could also use another debian installer, such as Knoppix with the HDD install option, or wait a few months for the "easy" installer to come out. However, using Fedora and switching to Debian when you have enough background knowledge is a good idea.

Fedora is the bleeding edge of Redhat -- its analogous to Debian Unstable. Redhat's officially-branded products are analogous to Debian Stable. I currently run Fedora Core 1 and it is good. FC2 will be out in a month (they had to delay SELinux functionality until FC3, though).

The primary update agent is yum, not apt-rpm. I don't really like yum that much and mostly use Ximian's Red-Carpet (with OpenCarpet) to update.

Knoppix on the HD, meh. I'd rather have some crazy hybrid of Knoppix/CD and Knoppix/HD (IOW, like Knoppix's CD environment but with multiple user support).

phongn wrote:Fedora is the bleeding edge of Redhat -- its analogous to Debian Unstable. Redhat's officially-branded products are analogous to Debian Stable. I currently run Fedora Core 1 and it is good. FC2 will be out in a month (they had to delay SELinux functionality until FC3, though).

The primary update agent is yum, not apt-rpm. I don't really like yum that much and mostly use Ximian's Red-Carpet (with OpenCarpet) to update.

Knoppix on the HD, meh. I'd rather have some crazy hybrid of Knoppix/CD and Knoppix/HD (IOW, like Knoppix's CD environment but with multiple user support).

Sorta on the subject, I have a knoppix variant called Damn Small Linux. It's 50 megs and designed for... smart cards(?) I boot from it every now and then. Taught myself how to mount things while using it.

Last night I decided to download Gentoo, so I'll try that later in the day.