knoppix 3.8.1 can't find a suitable xserver for video card

I've tried all of the cheatcodes that look like they might have anything to do with the video card including failsafe, but no luck. And this is on two separate machines - a Dell 8500 laptop with 512mb RAM, and an Athlon K7 with 392mb RAM. The video cards in question are the Mobility Radeon 9000 and an older ATI Rage Pro. The autodetect finds the hardware just fine, but X11 just won't start and it tries several times going through several iterations before finally giving up. This does not appear to be a bad cut of the CD or a corrupt .iso, but I suspect it's possible. I can get a console prompt but no X and, of course, no KDE. Startx (from the said console) does not do anything more than what the CD normally does (doesn't work either).

Just curious if anyone else has run into a similar problem. I'm booting the live CD version 3.8.1 that I downloaded from one of the German mirrors (it was featured on the front page of Distrowatch).

BTW, I have a ver. 3.7 knoppix Live CD that works like a charm on both machines. The Athlon machine has gentoo 2005.0 loaded, so I know X (well, xorg) works on that machine in a native build. I've also gotten Mepis, DSL, Puppy, and other distros to boot on the laptop.

I will try again when a 3.8.2 is released, of course ;-)

roofer

I'm having the same problem. I have a Compaq Presario V2000 with an Intel Pentium M 1.5GHz processor, Widescreen Display (1280x768), 512MB of RAM, integrated Intel 82852/82855GM video card.

Using Knoppix 3.7 it dies during boot, some of the kernel modules seg fault or it never gets past the Ethernet driver. With Knoppix 3.8 and 3.8.1 it seems to detect the hardware just fine and then hangs at "Starting X11..."

I have tried using a bunch of cheat codes without any success:

screen=1280x768
xserver=XFree86
xserver=XF86_SVGA
xmodule=i810
xmodule=svga
acpi=off
noscsi

Nothing seems to be working. Any ideas???

I noticed in a few posts up the forum that someone else was experiencing the same problem (see can't get graphics on Dell...). I have not had any time to look any further or try any more combinations of cheatcodes so I'm still in the same quandry. If I find out anything I'll post a note. They did seemingly find a soltion by setting teh vsync (vertical sync rate of the monitor) to 100.0 and resolution to 1280x1024 with vga=normal. I haven't tried that yet.

:? Having the same problem on my Siemens Field PG (A Laptop) with S3 Savage Graphic card, also treid all the cheats with no luck. text console works fine but not the X server. I think it has somthing to do with the Display. Will keep eyes and ears open.

P.S what is the PCI nummer of the card or where do we find it.

I tried the vsync and vga=normal with different parameters but still not working.

The new Ubuntu 5.04 live CD works fine though without any extra settings. Anyone know how I can find out what it might be doing differently than Knoppix to allow X to work properly?

I have hardware that is definately supported by KNOPPIX: AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processor, 256Mb RAM, ATI Radeon 9550SE video card, among other stuff. KNOPPIX 3.7 works fine, 3.8 doesnt. I have ran testcd, among other codes, yet to no avail. When it says X Windows session starting the screen goes black before the GUI shows up. In 3.7 it does this and the GUI shows up like 1 second later. With 3.8, an amber light turns on on my CRT monitor, and the screen is black. I have waited 5 minutes one time to see if a miracle would happen but none did. I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY BOOTED THE SAME KNOPPIX CD ON ANOTHER COMPUTER THOUGH, AND IT WORKED FINE. I dont know wth is wrong here. >(

On the ACER TravelMate 4000 WLMI the xserver also didn't start, but with the following cheat code the xserver comes up:

knoppix noagp

Don't no why this cheat code works, of cause there is an AGP-Port in this notebook, and normally AGP is auto detected while the knoppix boot process.

With “noagp” the Autodetection of the AGP Port is bypassed but the xserver starts up.

Wolfgnag Nohl

I've tried several more of the cheatcodes, including noagp, and, of course, several variations thereof. I am not able to find a combination that works. I get the "Starting X..." message, the screen flashes a few times, it then tries XFree86(vesa), then some more flashing, then the fb server, before it finally gives up.

I might try a different download from another mirror because I really would like to have the 3.8.1 Live CD (working of course). It does have some updated versions of software and that's a good thing. After that, if it does the same thing, I'll give up and use something else.

Thanks for help,

roofer

I FINALLY GOT IT TO WORK ON MY PC! :)
Heres how:
I typed in:
failsafe

Now it works. The only problem is that I cant get onto the internet and other stuff doesnt work BUT AT LEAST I GOT TO SEE IT!! :)

I typed in:
knoppix screen=800x600 depth=24

Everything works now including the internet(im on KNOPPIX now;) )
I have not run into any problems thus far. Im going to try other screen resolutions but Im not going to post any of them that work because by using common sense: they should all work. You need to know the screen resolution that you fancy(like my 800x600) before you do this and you shouldnt try any other depths unless you know what you are doing.