From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0) Description of problem: Xconfigurator, when launching the Xterm to test the entries, remains at the 'grey screen' and no longer displays the box asking if the box can be seen. Ctrl-alt-bksp must be used to return to Xconfigurator. Hardware: Dell Precision 410 system unit (nVidia TNT2, 32Mb graphics on board) Dell M770 monitor How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. launch Xconfigurator 2. autoprobe for card & monitor, choose any color depth/resolution 3. wait (forever) for box to be displayed asking if box can be seen Actual Results: When the xterm starts (grey screen), nothing more happens. Expected Results: A box should be displayed asking if the box can be seen. Additional info: The Xconfigurator had run successfully in the past. Just prior to this attempt, XFree86 was attempted to be updated from 4.0.1 to 4.0.3-5, however, only XFree86-libs and XFree-xfs were successful. XFree86, itself, aborts when RPM tries to update from 4.0.1 to 4.0.3-5. I am now unable to use the system because it appears to be in 8-bit color mode. My application pull-down windows show white letters on white background, making them unreadable.
The problem with RPM is described in a bugzilla - search for 'rpm md5'.
Please provide the exact complete full error message you receive. You can cut and paste it into a file and then attach the file to the bug report. I also will need your XFree86 server logs and config file attached uncompressed using the link below.
Created attachment 20632 [details] gdm XFree log
Created attachment 20633 [details] root XFree log
No errors are visible on the screen. As described in the main body, the screen goes 'grey', awaiting the presence of something to be displayed. Nothing gets displayed. ctrl-alt-bksp returns the screen to the prior image (the desktop containing the terminal window from which Xconfigurator was launched). Xconfigurator indicates that there is a problem with the X system. I believe the problem to be related to the aborted attempt to upgrade from XFree86 4.0.1 to 4.0.3. However, I am unable to revert back to 4.0.1 for the same problem preventing the upgrade - an MD5 issue from RPM when updating or un-updating. The system currently works, but appears to be 'stuck' in whatever screen mode it is. I can't tell which, but it appears to be at least 12kx10k at 60Mhz in 8 bit depth. Resolution cannot be changed via ctrl-alt-plus.
Created attachment 20634 [details] XF86Config
Created attachment 20635 [details] XF86Config-4
Your packages are mixed up. You've got some 4.0.1 and some 4.0.3 packages installed. This is not going to work. Also, any MD5 messages you see, are not errors, they are warnings to you that your package is corrupt. This means when you downloaded it it got corrupted. You'll need to download all of the XFree86 4.0.3 packages, as well as the latest Xconfigurator, and the rest of the packages that 4.0.3 requires. First step is to uninstall all currently installed XFree86 packages, and verify there are no more installed with: rpm -qa |sort|grep XFree86 it should report nothing. Then install the new packages. I should also note that, while 4.0.3 will work in Guinness, it is not supported configuration as we have never officially released packages for Guinness. Also, DRI will not work, and *must* be disabled. If you require DRI, then you will have to also upgrade to a 2.4.x kernel, and then upgrade a slew of other items as well. In the end upgrading to Seawolf properly is the easiest solution.
I have a similar problem with the same monitor. I have a black screen when I dock my laptop to a DELL M770 monitor. I have RH8.0 on a Dell laptop, docking to a DELL docking station, with a Dell monitor (this should be a receipe for success). But, when I try to configure my system with redhat-config-x86free, my screen goes blank until control-alt-backspace. Since I also have XP on the same machine, I have tried it and XP detects and manhandles my dell monitor fine.