New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Help!

post #1 of 22
2/7/03 at 1:29am
Thread Starter 
Ok, here's the deal:

I hate Linux. It is the one thing that makes me want to NOT get up in the morning. However, my CS department is actually run by monkeys using typewriters, ...SO..., every teacher, computer, and server in there uses Linux. Hence, when working on CS assignments, I am forced to use it. The particular "distro" I am talking about is the good ol' Red Hat Linux, and the only interface I can tolerate is KDE.

[By the way, what in the name of the lord of the rings is Enlightment supposed to be? Somebody is hitting the hashish pipe WAY too much for something like that to even exist.]

That was the "good" part. The problem is, Linux keeps crashing on me over and over and over, and I don't know what I'm doing to trigger it. There are some different scenarios:

1) COMPLETELY RANDOMLY, the monitor sort of blacks out, and it's as if I'm instantly logged out, because after a few seconds the LogIn screen fades back in.

2) After closing a "window," the screen completely freezes, usually with the view looking highly corrupted. It's sort of like TV static, except it's horizontally streched, and it's in color. I noticed this happens usually when I close whatever it is the "Excel" substitute that is loaded in there is called.

3) This is my favorite. The machine, with no action on my part, simply decides to reboot itself. This is even worse than case (1) because it goes completely back to the BIOS' POST operation, and it takes forever to boot up again.

Please, for the love of god, is there anything to be done here? I just don't understand why this keeps happening to me. I'm serious, it's as if the OS knew I hate it and constantly manages to annoy me even further. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks a lot! Cheers.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 22
2/7/03 at 6:15am
what kind of computer is it? Linux is supposed to be able to run on low requirements, but my mandrake lags, so...

Enlightenment is like KDE, just with no toolbar and no desktop; some people like it better because it's simple.

1) maybe you have some settings for it to lock after a few minutes?

2), 3) they're both very strange.

Linux screws up every other install or so, so I'd reccomdn re-installing it?
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 22
2/7/03 at 12:24pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by denkc
what kind of computer is it? Linux is supposed to be able to run on low requirements, but my mandrake lags, so...

Enlightenment is like KDE, just with no toolbar and no desktop; some people like it better because it's simple.

1) maybe you have some settings for it to lock after a few minutes?

2), 3) they're both very strange.

Linux screws up every other install or so, so I'd reccomdn re-installing it?
Hey, thanks. Where could I look to see if there's a setting to lock out after a while? There are so many little "system" apps here that I can't find a "master" one. As for a re-install, I really couldn't, cause it's "their" computers, not mine, so....

Thanks again! Cheers.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 22
2/7/03 at 12:29pm
heh, I would check the settings under:

settings -> advanced -> random crashes

Try turning the timers way up (to give you more time to work) or I suppose you could try turning them off completely (although most servers won't let you do that for security reasons).

Reply
Reply
post #5 of 22
2/7/03 at 3:08pm
It might have to do with your driver setting in the XF86Config file. You might be using a beta driver. Find this file in /etc/X11 and find the section "driver" and change it to "vesa".
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 22
2/7/03 at 7:24pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by dirtboy
It might have to do with your driver setting in the XF86Config file. You might be using a beta driver. Find this file in /etc/X11 and find the section "driver" and change it to "vesa".
Would I need "root" priviledges for this? 'cause I don't have them.

Cheers.
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 22
2/7/03 at 7:55pm
Yes, you would in order to change the default. Perhaps you could take it to whoever administers the laptop and get them to check it out?
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 22
2/7/03 at 8:05pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by dirtboy
Yes, you would in order to change the default. Perhaps you could take it to whoever administers the laptop and get them to check it out?
It's not a laptop, it's dell dual-xeon machine. I'll see if I can get some teaching-assistant to take a look at it or something. Thanks!

Cheers.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 22
2/8/03 at 1:57pm

Not sure

Im not sure. Id love to have a go at it myself because your situation is extremely rare. Im starting to think that the pple who run it are monkeys...its starting to sound like something corrupt in the kernel. Or, whoever installed the os didnt know what the heck they were doing. i am dissappointed that someone who could have had a pleasant experience isnt on account of whoever had a hand in the installation and support. At this point, im sure its not on you Yale, and you could prolly blame the ones who installed the os. But, do all the systems do this? (crash) If so, then they prolly used the same jacked disk. Ill try to look into this further...
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 22
2/8/03 at 3:52pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Not sure

Quote:
Originally posted by Icefluxx
Im not sure. Id love to have a go at it myself because your situation is extremely rare. Im starting to think that the pple who run it are monkeys...its starting to sound like something corrupt in the kernel. Or, whoever installed the os didnt know what the heck they were doing. i am dissappointed that someone who could have had a pleasant experience isnt on account of whoever had a hand in the installation and support. At this point, im sure its not on you Yale, and you could prolly blame the ones who installed the os. But, do all the systems do this? (crash) If so, then they prolly used the same jacked disk. Ill try to look into this further...
That's the thing, is has. I usually go to this "one" machine, cause it's got a nice view, so I thought maybe it was just that one. But then I tried the one opposing it, and it "logged me off" too. That's the one thing that happens the most. It's really strange. Thanks.

Cheers.
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 22
2/8/03 at 6:13pm
I'd take the microsoft approach and format your computer then reinstall redhat. Or, screw redhat, and try a different one.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 22
2/8/03 at 7:46pm
Quote:
However, my CS department is actually run by monkeys using typewriters, ...SO..., every teacher, computer, and server in there uses Linux.
crash course?
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 22
2/9/03 at 2:30am
Just to give you a little background on this, it sounds like X is crashing. It also sounds like the machine has gdm, kdm or xdm running, so whenever X crashes, you get the graphical login screen again. If you wanted to be sneaky, you could see if you have sudo priviledges.

On another note, could it be a screensaver or something that is crashing X, or are you in the midst of activity when it happens?
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 22
2/9/03 at 12:30pm
Yale,

Can you connect to this machine over the net from your laptop? If so, run an XWindows client on your laptop and pull the programs back to it. That way, you can use any of the linux machines you have accounts with but from within windows so you don't have to learn the new OS, much anyway.

-Phar
Reply
Reply
post #15 of 22
2/9/03 at 3:14pm

Ati Drivers on linux ANSWERS and soluces !!!

Okies, you all want this great ATI M 9000 to spit its guts on these sager/clevo/Eurocom/Promedion laptops ?

2 Ways: Hard and Harder:

a) Got to www.ati.com there click find a driver, Os enter Linux/Xfree, Card enter Radeon 9000 Pro, this will lead you to a page with the fglrx ati drivers. There are RPMs. There is 2 links to help you installing them. Installations tips and Drivers Notes or somit. Please before posting questions, make sure you copy these 2 text files, print them etc. Read and understand them and the DRI + appropriate OpenGL by ATI will work. To proove it, i run an Athlon 2000+, 256 DDR 400 PC3200, Asus Mobo, KT400 chipset with an Hercules 9000 Pro 128 DDR ram. This gives me hehehhe, 180/220 FPs on Quake 3 Arena 1024x768 FULL FULL details (customs config). This Desktop runs a dual boot of Debian Linux and Lr-s LFS Linux.

b) Second way is using the current release of the DRI ( Direct Rendering Infrastructure ) and requires a complete rebuild/recompile of keys components of a linux distro like the X server. The great instructions ( i use these drivers on the Lr-s Linux partitions ) can be found here

http://kr.mnsu.edu/~bayerr/radeon.html

So please treat Linux as it should, little time and effort will unleash the power of your Ati M9. Treating Linux with a "vesa" driver should be only while setting up the 'REAL' drivers hehehe

Not exactly user friendly, but this is the price to pay for real freedom and independance.
By the way, i am posting here as i have ordered today a 5660-s and can't wait to chap linux on it and make it screammm
Reply
Reply
post #16 of 22
2/9/03 at 4:44pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by phar
Yale,

Can you connect to this machine over the net from your laptop? If so, run an XWindows client on your laptop and pull the programs back to it. That way, you can use any of the linux machines you have accounts with but from within windows so you don't have to learn the new OS, much anyway.

-Phar
Hey! Yeah, I can actually connect to all the linux machines remotely using Secure Shell! What is this you are talking about?Can I get that XWindows client on a native Windows machine?Thanks a lot! This might actually solve some stuff.

Also:

denkc>> I would love to do something like that, but I can't exactly reformat the hard drives on a whim of mine.

laclasse>> What are you talking about, man?

tomaz>> No, it's not a crash course, I'm a Computer Science major. But a lot of the things I have to do through their Linux machines, because they have a whole system setup.

dirtboy>> Yes, in fact, that's exactly what I think is happening. The "X" thing is crashing. However, I'm pretty certain it's not the screen saver. I have a "matrix" one setup, and it never does it. It's always when I'm in the middle of something. It seems the more important what I'm doing is, the more likely it is to crash. Murphy's law. Hehehe.

Thanks a lot, guys!
Cheers.
Reply
Reply
post #17 of 22
2/9/03 at 4:56pm
Yale, ummm geez graphic drivers for Ati Radeon M9 on linux. Maybe that wasn't the properr place to do so ? sorry new to these forums.
Reply
Reply
post #18 of 22
2/9/03 at 5:01pm
Yale2006, now i have read your problems, and still believe they are graphic drivers related. What distro do you use on that machine ?
Reply
Reply
post #19 of 22
2/9/03 at 5:32pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by laclasse
Yale, ummm geez graphic drivers for Ati Radeon M9 on linux. Maybe that wasn't the properr place to do so ? sorry new to these forums.
Sorry about that. It came out the wrong way. I just meant I didn't understand. My mistake.

Cheers.
Reply
Reply
post #20 of 22
2/9/03 at 5:32pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by laclasse
Yale2006, now i have read your problems, and still believe they are graphic drivers related. What distro do you use on that machine ?
It's Red Hat with KDE. Thanks!

Cheers.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Linux & Other OS's