Ubuntu help

[RESmonkey]

Dual booted Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy heron) 64bit w/ Vista Home Premium 32-bit.

-Ubunut's Xorg.conf doesn't have half the stuff it does on my Dell; I can't change screen resolution.


-went to boot vista, vista ran CHKDSK (which is okay im assuming), but once i hit the desktop, It automatically installed "Generic Volume Driver." WTF is that?
It probably had something to do w/ me partitioning the HDD to make room for Ubuntu, right?



Sorry for the typing mistakes I am tired, angry, etc.

 

[postmortemIA]

i see no problems here

just paste your xorg.conf and make sure you have enabled restricted driver (in other words nvidia or ati driver if you hsave graphics)

 

[RESmonkey]

I don't have enough workspace (low resolution) to do anything. I tried installing ATi drivers, but the window is too big and the bottoms are off the screen, and I can't move it so that I can see or click on any installation buttons.

 

[Nothinman]

You should be able to move any window in X by holding ALT then clicking and dragging.

 

[stevf]

RES - i am not sure what you are asking - is it vista or ubuntu that has the video problem now. if you resized the partition for vista that may have caused problems. It sounds like you need to change/setup the video for whichever one is the problem. I have vista business and xubuntu dual booted on one machine and had no problems but I manually partitioned from the beginning. I have fiddled with the linux side a few times to try out opensuse and after several reinstalls on various linux's havent had any problems with the vista side

 

[RESmonkey]

Originally posted by: stevf
RES - i am not sure what you are asking - is it vista or ubuntu that has the video problem now. if you resized the partition for vista that may have caused problems. It sounds like you need to change/setup the video for whichever one is the problem. I have vista business and xubuntu dual booted on one machine and had no problems but I manually partitioned from the beginning. I have fiddled with the linux side a few times to try out opensuse and after several reinstalls on various linux's havent had any problems with the vista side

Ubuntu. The driver installation window is too big for my resolution.

 

[stevf]

ok - I think i know what you are talking about - the buttons to click ok, etc are off the bottom so you cant change anything? I have seen that before and cant remember how I worked around it. Try opening up the settings for gnome and turn off the top and bottom bars temporarily - I think that is what I have done before - once you get your screen res set correctly you can turn those bars back on. I am at work so cant give you much more detail than that for now

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

It will suck, but open firefox and get Envy. It will install your graphics drivers.

 

[mc866]

Not positive on all this because I haven't had much experience but here are a few suggestions.

When I dual booted Hardy, Vista would install the generic volume driver, this I believe is just Vista recognizing the Linux partition and doesn't hurt anything.

I ran into what I think is a similar issue with the NVIDIA drivers, my screen was all messed up so I couldn't do anything from the GUI. So you will need to install outside of gnome, hoping this works for the ATI drivers. Isn't there a way to shut down gnome and install from the console? I had to do this with the Nvidia drivers, here is the command to shut down knome and get the console up

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

From here you could try and install envy

sudo apt-get install envyng-gtk
envyng-t

reboot, and see if that helps?

 

[RESmonkey]

Originally posted by: stevf
ok - I think i know what you are talking about - the buttons to click ok, etc are off the bottom so you cant change anything? I have seen that before and cant remember how I worked around it. Try opening up the settings for gnome and turn off the top and bottom bars temporarily - I think that is what I have done before - once you get your screen res set correctly you can turn those bars back on. I am at work so cant give you much more detail than that for now

I moved the bottom and top bars to the left and right of the screen, and still I am about a few pixels too short to fit that installtion window.

What I don't understand is, how a window can go off the screen horizontally, but not diagonally?


I'll look into Envy in a sec.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

I've had this happen to me before while I was configuring PCLOS 07. Have you tried to install the driver from Jockey or the package manager?

 

[Nothinman]

You should be able to move any window in X by holding ALT then clicking and dragging.

 

[RESmonkey]

I just booted ubuntu up and it's gone to hell. This time, I can't even get the default 800x600. It was a bright green and brown messed up stretched and cheese-grated desktop; I could not read a thing, could barely make out shutdown button. Also, there were doubles/triples of everything on screen.


Is there a way to boot straight to console? I can't access terminal because I can't read anything now, nor can I focus on where I'm clicking.

 

[stevf]

going from memory because I am still at work but when grub comes up and give you a choice of what to boot there should be a safe boot choice or an f key to hit to get to console only. or you can choose your kernel, edit the boot string there (should be instructions and these changes wont be saved - only for this boot) to add a 1 at the end and that should boot to single user mode and that should be console.

Or with how it boots now you should be able to hit ctrl+alt+f1 (or any f key between 1 and 6) and get to a virtual console to log in to that way

also another thing to try if you get that garbled gui - ctrl-alt-backspace should restart x server and that might clear it up

 

[RESmonkey]

I got the console up with ctrl-alt-f1, installed envy, restarted. It's still messed up.


edit = I edited the xorg.conf under nano in the console, erased anything i had typed in there to mess it up, and now I'm back to the default 800x600 (although, it does go bright greeen and mess up before the for a few seconds, and then the login screen fixes itself.

Now what should I do to xorg.conf to make it the right resolution (1600x900) and not 800x600?:


edit 2: I did the alt+click method, installing drivers ...

edit 3: nothing changed, even with the drivers. still flashes green login then fixes itself, and still have 800x600. How should I modify my xorg.conf?

 

[RESmonkey]

 

[stevf]

ok - lets try some more - First just want to verify you installed vista, resized the partition, installed ubuntu and grub for your boot loader - correct? Vista works for you? What mobo and graphics card you using? Are you trying i386 or x64 version? Did you use a live or alt install?


now try this - boot up and select the recovery line and it will boot up a bit then give you a simple menu which gives you the option to try to fix X server - give that a try also on that menu is a repair broken packages option - try that if the first one doesnt work.

If you have nothing to lose on the linux side you may want to reinstall and when you get the first ubuntu screen from booting off the CD you can then try to repair or look at all the options using the f keys listed and see if you can force video mode you want or you can select safe video then update video after installed

let us know if any of that did anything

 

[RESmonkey]

^

x64 version. Everything is visible now, but in 800x600. In the old Ubuntu ( that which is on my old PC) had a more detailed xorg.conf with Display options, etc. and much more info I could change. If I try changing the hardy Heron's xorg.conf to be more detailed or include resolution modes, it doesn't work.

 

[stevf]

what video card are you using? or is it integrated? you should be able to change to the setting s you need using the gui tools if you so desire. also are you using the default video drivers or the nvidia or ati ones

 

[RESmonkey]

I installed the proprietary catalyst after being able to move the window using alt+click. Before that, I used Envy.

My GPU is actually very new ( I think). It is a new laptop (Centrino 2 unofficial). It has an ATi Radeon Mobility HD 3470. ATi's linux drivers support HD 3*** series, though, but I'm not sure if it's desktop support or desktop and mobile support.