David @ Tokyo

I've had some troubles with my Linux installation over the last month, but am getting on top of it now.

Being able to go back to my blog posts in March 2005 on the topic of installing Debian over the ADSL connection was surprisingly helpful (amazing how much useful information one can forget over the space of 700 days...), and so I'm going to jot some notes down again now so the next time this sort of thing happens I can once again help my future self.

1) X fails to start. /var/log/Xorg.0.log extract:

(EE) intel(0): detecting sil164
(EE) intel(0): sil164 not detected got 5: from DVOI2C_E Slave 112.
compiled for 1.3.0, module version = 1.0.0
ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 1.2
(EE) intel(0): Unable to read from DVOI2C_E Slave 236.
compiled for 1.3.0, module version = 1.0.0
ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 1.2
(EE) intel(0): ivch: Unable to read register 0x00 from DVOI2C_B:04.
compiled for 1.3.0, module version = 1.0.0
ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 1.2
(EE) intel(0): tfp410 not detected got VID 1305: from DVOI2C_E Slave 112.
(EE) intel(0): No valid modes.
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

This seems to be a problem with the current intel driver in xorg, but replacing intel with "vesa" gets around the problem for the mean time.

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Corporation 82830 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]"
# Driver "intel"
Driver "vesa"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

2) Getting ntfs partition set up again (easy):

debian:~# modprobe ntfs
debian:~# mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/xphome

And in /etc/fstab (unified diff):

+/dev/hda1 /mnt/xphome ntfs ro,umask=0222,iocharset=utf8 0 0

3) Essential packages (for starters):

xdm
x-window-system
enlightenment
cvs

Labels: linux