7.1. The Video Card Doesn't Function.

If you see a black screen with white text, like this:

and not something like in Figure 6-8, despite having installed one of the profiles workstation or ltspserver, then something went wrong with the configuration of your video card. It might help trying to manually reconfigure the video card with the command

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

and answer the questions.

• Manage XFree86 4.x server configuration file with debconf? Answer:Yes

• Select the desired X server driver. This is most often the most difficult to answer, maybe the output from lspci can help you. Once you have found your video driver, navigate by using the TAB key on the keyboard down to OK and press ENTER

• Enter an identifier for your video card. Answer: what you like. Sometimes there is already something written there.

• Please enter the video card's bus identifier. Answer: leave it blank, that is normally just fine.

• Enter the amount of memory (in KB) to be used by your video card. Answer: Leave it blank, that is normally just fine.

• Please select the XKB rule set to use. Answer: xfree86. This is normally already there.

• Please select your keyboard model. Answer: pc104 or pc105 should be fine; there is a screen with more instructions about keyboard models.

• Please select your keyboard layout. Answer: us for US, no for Norway, de for Germany, and so on.

• Please select your keyboard variant. Answer: you could leave this blank.

• Please select your keyboard options. Answer: You could leave this blank.

• Please choose your mouse port: Answer: /dev/misc/psaux is a good choice.

• Please choose the entry that best describes your mouse. Answer: PS/2 is a safe choice.

• Emulate 3-button mouse? Answer: Yes

• Enable scroll events from mouse wheel? Answer: Yes or no, depending.

• Enter an identifier for your monitor. Answer: You can write whatever you like here.

• Is your monitor an LCD device? Answer: Only you know the answer.

• Please choose a method for selecting your monitor characteristics. Answer: Simple

• Please choose your approximate monitor size. Answer: Choose the right size for your monitor.

• Select the video modes you would like the X server to use. Answer: Use the SPACEBAR to place a star in front of each of the video modes you want. The video mode 1024x768 is normally a good choice for the highest value of video modes.

• Please select your desired default color depth in bits. Answer: 16 is a safe choice

• Select the XFree86 server modules that should be loaded by default. Answer: just answer OK to the default.

• Write default Files section to configuration file? Answer: Yes

• Write default DRI section to configuration file? Answer: Yes

Once you are done with dpkg-reconfigure, you should see something like

Wrote X server configuration to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.

It might help to know something about what type of video card you have in your computer, the command lspci is helpful:

tjener:~# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82440MX I/O Controller (rev 01)
00:00.1 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82440MX AC'97 Audio Controller
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Motion, Inc. SM710 LynxEM (rev a3)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82440MX PCI to ISA Bridge (rev 01)
00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82440MX EIDE Controller
00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82440MX USB Universal Host Controller
00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82440MX Power Management Controller
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 80)
00:0a.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 80)

Here you notice that I have a Silicon Motion video card. If you need more info from lspci then try lspci -vn. Maybe you need to pipe it through more or less, like lspci -vn|more

If you still experience problems with your video card, then have a look at Section 2.6. Perhaps you should consider installing a backported version of XFree86 4.3; not sure where that is available.

If you just need to change the depth and resolution, then you can open the file /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 with a editor from the command line like

kdesu kwrite

and edit the lines corresponding to the depth you wish to have

DefaultDepth     16

and the lines

SubSection "Display"
                Depth     16
                Modes    "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

If you aren't able to resolve your problem with the video card within a few minutes, then I advise you to get a new video card that has better Linux support, unless it's a laptop, in which case getting another video card isn't so easy.