I'm new to Linux, and I've just finished a network install of Debian etch to an dual USB, G3, 500MHz iBook. The installation seemed to go fine, but when I boot up, what I'm getting is very strange looking screen. There's a large horizontal line that divides the screen in half, and there are two vertical lines that divide the screen into thirds or so. Nothing is visible, except the left-hand third of the screen - the rest of the screen is black. In the visible area, I can see enough of an actual screen to see that it is asking for the username, so when I enter that and the password, I then get to the desktop - but again with only a narrow strip of the actual screen functioning along the left hand edge. I can see the "computer" icon, my "home" folder and the Trash icon. (There's also a duplicate of this image that appears below the horizontal line.) I can see the mouse, and it does respond. I can even activate a drop-down menu - it would seem the "Desktop" menu is where I might be able to change video settings - but then I can't see the menu! Is there some kind of boot option I can use? I have no idea how to do this.

"Mark Fairchild" <mjfairchild@yahoo.com> writes: >I'm new to Linux, and I've just finished a network install of Debian etch >to an dual USB, G3, 500MHz iBook. The installation seemed to go fine, but >when I boot up, what I'm getting is very strange looking screen. There's a >large horizontal line that divides the screen in half, and there are two >vertical lines that divide the screen into thirds or so. Nothing is >visible, except the left-hand third of the screen - the rest of the screen >is black. In the visible area, I can see enough of an actual screen to see >that it is asking for the username, so when I enter that and the password, I >then get to the desktop - but again with only a narrow strip of the actual >screen functioning along the left hand edge. I can see the "computer" icon, >my "home" folder and the Trash icon. (There's also a duplicate of this >image that appears below the horizontal line.) I can see the mouse, and it >does respond. I can even activate a drop-down menu - it would seem the >"Desktop" menu is where I might be able to change video settings - but then >I can't see the menu! > >Is there some kind of boot option I can use? I have no idea how to do this. The typical way to deal with this is to switch to one of the text mode virtual terminals (usually, with Ctrl-Alt-F1...Ctrl-Alt-F6, you may or may not have to press the Fn key). Then you can try to do things such as dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg Or you can edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf directly and see how well the xorg.conf works with X :1 This will just give you a mesh screen and a mouse cursor, but should be enough to see if the xorg.conf works. Stop that X server with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Once you have an xorg.conf that works, you restart the main X server, typically by restarting the display manager, e.g., /etc/init.d/gdm restart #if you use gdm as display manager Directly editing the xorg.conf is a rather involved topic; if you want to go that way, read the xorg.conf man page; you may also find help at some howtos. - anton -- M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html