Ubuntu

No GUI on server

Asked by Andrew Heiss

Newbie here!

I just installed Feisty Server to get a LAMP server set up and it went smoothly and quick and great. However, this is my first foray into Linux, so I wanted the GUI. I found online that I'm supposed to do sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop or something to install the GNOME desktop.

It installed just fine - no errors. However, after restarting the computer to boot into the desktop mode, I can't get anything to show on my monitor, like the video card never installed. The sound works--I even logged in blindly, but couldn't do anything.

I then used an old 6.06 CD to boot as a live CD to see if my video card is supported (it's integrated in an old Compaq smallform box), and it worked just fine.

How can I get the GUI desktop to work? How can I leave the blank screen GUI and get to the shell to fix it?

Thanks!

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Andrew Heiss
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Roberto Sarrionandia (rbs-tito) said : 		#1

Try getting back to the command line, try pressing ctrl + alt + f1 to get to a command line.

From there edit your x configuration file with the command

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Find the section "device" and change the line with "driver" to

Driver "vesa"

Press ctrl + x, then y for yes, then enter to save the file.

Your GUI should now load on reboot, from there you can experiment with different drivers.

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Andrew Heiss (andrewheiss) said : 		#2

It was already set to Driver "vesa" and didn't work. Do I need to find the actual driver online? If so, how do I install that without being able to download anything graphically?

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Andrew Heiss (andrewheiss) said : 		#3

It is an old Compaq IPaq (http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10832_div/10832_div.HTML) with an Integrated Intel 3D Direct AGP Graphics card. Shouldn't that just work?

I also tried sudo apt-get install gdm to see if something went wrong there, but it said it was current and updated.

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Shashank Chintalagiri (shashank-chintalagiri) said : 		#4

Could you please post the output of the following commands here.. ?

dmesg
lspci
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Thanks

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Andrew Heiss (andrewheiss) said : 		#5

Sorry it's been a while - was busy with finals...

The dmesg output was huge and I couldn't see any video related things there
Using lspci I found this:
00:02.0 VGA compatibile controller: Intel Corporation 82815 CGC (rev 02)
The other two outputs were huge and long as well...how do I see them page by page? (I'm a total newbie at this!)
The end of /etc/X11/xorg.conf had some information about screen resolutions, but I couldn't tell any more than that

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Best Andrew Heiss (andrewheiss) said : 		#6

I fixed it!

After a while of research online, I found that the Intel i810 driver set is included in the package, but couldn't figure out how to set the drivers in xorg.conf.
I then did sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg and got a blue screen where I found a long list of driver packages, including the one I needed. I simply selected the Intel i810 set instead of the generic vesa, which apparently doesn't work, did a sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart, and everything works!

Thanks for all the help!