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Crash on boot of new install

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mykel

MIS
Jan 21, 2002
1
CA
UnixWare 7 - release 7.1.1

I will apologize in advance if this is a trivial non-question; I'm a complete newbie just trying to have a look at the unix world.

The machine is based upon the following kernal

AMD 1700+ CPU / Soyo Dragon+ MB / 512MB PC2100 DDR RAM
Nvidia GF2 titanium 64MB video

This is a new install, on the above machine. I used defaults for installation.
The install went fine, the kernal seemed to build ok, but then, just before the login dialog box would appear, screen goes black. Upon reboot, all looks fine, normal boot messages until just as the screen modes seems to change for the graphical login box, the screen then goes black. If you then strike any key the machine reboots.

I did a full re-install with the same results.

Please note that on both installs all screens, text or CHARM style, dialog boxes, graphics / splash screens etc etc that are displayed or entered ( Setup utilities ) ALL display fine. No errors, skewed colour, or corrupted display in any fashion.

I have tried looking into the problem with my limited resources. I tried the following after much fruitless reading. (All troubleshooting that I have read seems to assume that you can get to a working kernal). I figured that the default video driver would be loaded, but maybe corrupt. ( after a second install, I'm grasping at straws )

Start the boot process...
Hit enter at splash screen entering boot loader (?)
typed:

INITSTATE=S
boot

System then booted into a very limited single user state. Most commands that I know did not work and gave errors related to a software release tracking subsystem ( SC something ? ) ie scoadmin.

I tried the following command to force a reset of the video mode.

/usr/bin/X11/setvideomode -default

The command appeared to take, but upon reboot the same results as above.

I did check the video card mfg for Unix drivers, but alas no Unix, only Windows and Linux. I also tried to check a HW compatability list, but could not find one. The site address I had for a SCO hardware list now points to a Caldera page trying to sell me software.

So I guess my questions are:

Does anybody have any ideas on how I can solve this ? -- and --
Is there a way to boot to a terminal instead of the default graphics interface ? This way at least I can play in terminal mode ( more interesting than GUI anyway )

Thank-you in advance from a very frustrated newbie.

Michael
 
First- you are correct, your problem is with the video.

After it's up, simply hold CTRL and ALT and press any function key EXCEPT F2 to switch to a character login.

You can then run "mkdev graphics" to fix your video. Test it by running "startx". I suggest trying the Vesa driver as a beginning; see for more information on the gui, alt-screens, etc.

Should you not care about the gui at all for now, "scologin disable" will keep it from coming up on F2.

You need to apply some patches; see Tony Lawrence
SCO Unix/Linux Resources tony@pcunix.com
 
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