HP Omnibook Xe2: Unable to exit to prompt from any WM

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kcin
Posts: 102
Joined: Wed 28 Sep 2005, 14:47
Location: Oakland CA

HP Omnibook Xe2: Unable to exit to prompt from any WM

#1 Post by kcin »

Hello,

I'm using Chubby Puppy 1.05 on an HP Omnibook Xe2 Laptop with 256 MB RAM. So far I'm running just off the CD with Pup001 on a VectorLinux ext2 partition

While I was trying to configure IceWm and JWM and FluxBox and FVWM95 themes to my satisfaction I found that whenever I tried to exit any WM to the prompt to call up any other WM - it seems as if X is not fully closing - I never get a visible prompt on a black background as I would expect. Instead I get a garbled, reduced-sized (640x480) multi-color box in the center of the LCD. This garbled color display DOES seem to change in response to typed input as if it is trying to display.

I CAN still type blind and enter "startx <WM>" and the WM WILL come up, but it is annoying knowing that something is wrong that I can't fix, and difficult to type commands when you can't see the words your're typing on the screen. I never had this happen with Puppy 1.04 on this same machine.

When I'm in a WM, X runs great, 1024x768 x24 resolution on all the WMs.

Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone know what's wrong and how to fix it?

Best Regards,

kcin

keenerd
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat 20 Aug 2005, 19:24

#2 Post by keenerd »

I had similar problems, except my screen would go solid blue on the prompt. The problem was my video chipset. Find out exactly what chip you have and install the Xserver dotpup. That will give you drivers for just about everything. It's a lot of options and doesn't auto detect anything, so it's really important to know exactly what your chip is.

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.p ... ht=xserver

kcin
Posts: 102
Joined: Wed 28 Sep 2005, 14:47
Location: Oakland CA

#3 Post by kcin »

keenerd,

thanks for your input....

(I had similar problems, except my screen would go solid blue on the prompt. The problem was my video chipset. Find out exactly what chip you have and install the Xserver dotpup. That will give you drivers for just about everything. It's a lot of options and doesn't auto detect anything, so it's really important to know exactly what your chip is.

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.p ... ht=xserver)
I downloaded this xserver and installed it, and configured it for my video card ... (LynxEM - Silicon Motion) - but not only did it not fix the issue, it would not even allow me to get into X; it kept booting me out with an error message (I'm sorry, I don't have the text of the err msg here at work).

So then I tried downloading and using the pup001 file with the xserver already installed, and got the same result, so I ended up having to kill off both of those pup001's and start fresh - so now I'm back to square one.

Did the xserver fix your video issue?

Any other thoughts on what else I might try to fix this?

Best Regards,

kcin

keenerd
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat 20 Aug 2005, 19:24

#4 Post by keenerd »

Yes, it worked fine for me, but I'm using a Neomagic chip.

Maybe post full chip info and your xorg.conf file?

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