Getting desktop to work on server install

What video card does your machine have?

What does lspci report it as?

Some video cards are a bit tricky, knowing this will help us to figure out what the solution is.

In addition it could be that you are trying to drive the screen at the wrong resolution or at a refresh rate that is too high.

nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX5200] (rev a1)

I am willing to change this I have some other sitting here
nVIDIA mx440
or name a brand type that works easy and I will go get it

Thanks Troy

That's god, in the xserver-xorg config, choose the "nv" driver. This is the open source driver for nvidia cards. Alternatively you can install the proprietary binary-only nvidia driver. The process for this is outlined on the following page:-

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia

Make sure you check which version of the driver "nvidia-glx" or "nvidia-glx-legacy" you need for your video card. Details on the above page.

Fantastic working now wow thats great ok few more related questions.

in dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg there is now where to set the refresh rate is has come out at being 60 I would like to up this.

Also once desktop running whats the correct way to kill it and then reopen it.
How can I stop the desktop running on startup and just land at the normal prompt.

Also I get this error on starting of the desktop "Internal error failed to initialize HAL!" does this matter what is it and how do I fix it.

Many thanks for your help

Regards Troy

To change the refresh rate you need to specify "advanced" when it asks about the screen size in the reconfiguration tool. You will then be prompted for settings like vertical and horizontal refresh rate.

You can restart the desktop with CTRL+ALT+Backspace.
You can stop it from the command line with:-

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop,

start it with:-

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

and restart it with:-

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

To prevent the gui from starting up altogether use:-

sudo update-rc.d gdm remove

update-rc.d places and removes links in /etc/rcN.d (where N is a number) to scripts in /etc/init.d . The stuff in rc2.d gets called when the system enters runlevel 2, which happens when you boot up.

Not sure about the HAL error. It could be due to the order in which things start. Possibly gdm is starting before the dbus daemon. Can you run the following command and paste the output here?

ls -l /etc/rc2.d

Hope that helps.

now that I can use the desktop itś so much easier here is the dump.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 556 2006-10-06 21:04 README
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2007-04-08 14:28 S01apport -> ../init.d/apport
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2007-04-08 14:28 S05vbesave -> ../init.d/vbesave
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2007-04-08 14:28 S10acpid -> ../init.d/acpid
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2007-04-08 14:34 S10powernowd.early -> ../init.d/powernowd.early
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 2007-04-08 12:18 S10sysklogd -> ../init.d/sysklogd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2007-04-08 12:18 S11klogd -> ../init.d/klogd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2007-04-08 14:53 S13gdm -> ../init.d/gdm
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2007-04-08 14:38 S19cupsys -> ../init.d/cupsys
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2007-04-08 14:38 S19hplip -> ../init.d/hplip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2007-04-08 12:33 S19mysql -> ../init.d/mysql
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 2007-04-08 12:33 S19mysql-ndb-mgm -> ../init.d/mysql-ndb-mgm
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2007-04-08 14:28 S20apmd -> ../init.d/apmd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2007-04-08 14:28 S20dbus -> ../init.d/dbus
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 2007-04-08 14:50 S20festival -> ../init.d/festival
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2007-04-08 14:34 S20hotkey-setup -> ../init.d/hotkey-setup
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2007-04-08 12:17 S20makedev -> ../init.d/makedev
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2007-04-08 12:33 S20mysql-ndb -> ../init.d/mysql-ndb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2007-04-08 14:34 S20powernowd -> ../init.d/powernowd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2007-04-08 12:33 S20rsync -> ../init.d/rsync
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2007-04-08 14:28 S25bluetooth -> ../init.d/bluetooth
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2007-04-08 14:28 S89anacron -> ../init.d/anacron
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2007-04-08 12:32 S89atd -> ../init.d/atd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2007-04-08 12:32 S89cron -> ../init.d/cron
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 2007-04-08 14:28 S90binfmt-support -> ../init.d/binfmt-support
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2007-04-08 12:33 S91apache2 -> ../init.d/apache2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2007-04-08 14:37 S98usplash -> ../init.d/usplash
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2007-04-08 14:28 S99acpi-support -> ../init.d/acpi-support
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 2007-04-08 12:17 S99rc.local -> ../init.d/rc.local
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2007-04-08 12:17 S99rmnologin -> ../init.d/rmnologin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 2007-04-08 14:34 S99stop-readahead -> ../init.d/stop-readahead
tdavis@ubuntu:~$