Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 55398
cannot start x on a dell inspiron 8100
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:37:53 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.7 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.7 sun4u) Description of problem: It is not possible to start graphical display on my laptop (inspiron 8100). During th anaconda install, however, the configuration tested successfully (i could click on the "can you see this" popup) with a 600*800 resolution. At higher resolution, the sync is wrong. But after reboot, I only get vertical lines. The Xconfigurator does solve at all either. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install RH 7.2 on an inspiron 8100 2. Choose the proper screen from the menu (in my case, a dell 1400x lcd display) 3. Choose the minimal resolution offered (600*800) (tests successfully) 4. Finish the install. Actual Results: The machine reboots automatically, and then the X server does not work (the screen is stripped with vertical lines) Expected Results: A normal login prompt Additional info: There seems to have been an effort to incorporate nvidia drivers and dell lcd displays in this distribution. But the drivers installed cannot be upgraded by the ones currently available from nvidia, and the ranges proposed are declared out of rnage by XFree (looking at the log file)
The Geforce 2 Go video hardware that comes with the Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop is not supported by XFree86 4.1.0. It may or may not be supported in XFree86 4.2.0 when it is released sometime in late November. If I recall correctly, this video adaptor can be replaced with an ATI Radeon Mobility adaptor in this laptop, which is a card supported by XFree86 shipped with Red Hat Linux. Alternatively, you may install without configuring/testing X, and then use Nvidia's drivers if they support that. Please note, usage of Nvidia's binary drivers are only officially supported by Nvidia. Red Hat does not support, nor is it possible for us to support the binary only drivers. Hope this helps.