I am working with R4V4.1 and can boot from CD and run through the autoinstall process without incident. When I try and boot the newly installed system, the screen goes blank and the system is worthless. The last message that I read on the screen before every thing goes black involves starting GNOME. Does this mean that that problem is with X?

My download md5sum checked fine and the same thing happened with multiple cd burns.

It is an old machine
PIII 500
256 RAM
Dell 7335T System Board (Intel 440BX AGPset chipset)
nVidia RIVA TNT display card
WD 80GB HDD
PVR350 video capture

This will be my third installation of MythTV, and I am hoping that this one will be stable enough to be useful.

Any ideas about the source of the problem? Log files that I should examine? Ways to get on with the installation?

my guess would be that you are connected to a tv but didn't bother to read that you needed to change the resolution settings for tvout.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

that's not it...
my video card doesn't support tvout. I'm looking at an old blank vga monitor.

if it's old enough it still may be the same problem. It may not be able to accomidate the refresh rates or resolutions that X is trying to set. At any rate it is booting off the hard drive. you need to look at /var/log/XFree86.0.log To get to a console you can use ctrl+alt+F2

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

it looks like you are exactly right. thank you.

the only errors that I can find in XFree86.0.log involve font renderers. I'll mess with the monitor settings and see what happens.

Or should I not bother debugging this at all and forge ahead with the PVR350 tvout setup?

I had the same problem with KnoppMyth on my first install too. In fact I had the same problem the first time I tried Knoppix. Since one is based on the other, the Knoppix solution worked for KnoppMyth too.

It seems that current versions of Knoppix expect a system to run at a higher resolution and higher refresh rate. I haven't figured out what it wants by default, just that its defaults didn't like my system. I knew the same video card and monitor worked fine under Windows with a resolution of 800x600 and a refresh rate of 72 hz. I looked at the cheatsheet page for Knoppix and got the parameters for those settings.

The easiest solution is to run through the auto install again. When it pauses with a prompt at the first graphic KnoppMyth screen (I think it has a logo of a computer and some pink - it's been a while), type:
knoppmyth xvrefresh=72 screen=800x600 [ENTER]

You have to this relatively quickly. I suspect the timeout to use the default settings is around thirty seconds.

After the install KnoppMyth will boot with those new (or actually these days I'd guess you'd have to call them old) settings.

Of course my suggestion has a faitle flaw. Your system has to work with my settings. Adjust them for your computer if necessary.

Hello -

I am able to go through the full Auto Install of Knoppmyth. It says it has completed, and then unmounts, ejects CD, etc...with no error messages.

But on the first bootup, all I see is a black screen with a flashing cursor in the upper left of the monitor. CTL+ALT+F2 doesn't do anything.

I am installing it to a Dell Dimension XPS B800 (800Mhz)
PIII
WD Caviar 80GB
128MB RAM
Voodoo 3 PCI video
Soundblaster Live
Viewsonic monitor

I do not have a capture card in the machine yet. I am trying to see if Knoppmyth will install to my system before purchasing one.

I have confirmed the MD5SUM after download. I've tried going thru the process several times with the same results. Even tried another HD.

I tried knoppmyth xvrefresh=72 screen=800x600 [ENTER] during install, but it didn't work.

I'm relatively new to linux, so any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!


I tried s

1) I'm guessing that this is the Western Digital "cable select" issue. Enable your BIOS messages and look for something like "no system disk found". For more details search the forums for posts about Western Digital (or WD) and Cable Select (or CS).

2) Search first, ask questions second!

Thanks tjc for the idea,

I was able to install Windows 2000 onto the drive properly, and I also tried other cable select options and still the same results. The BIOS messages are already enabled, but I still see just a flashing cursor on the first bootup after installation.

Just as a test, I tried installing Knoppmyth to an older K6-2 PC (with a different hard drive...80GB is too large for the BIOS in this older PC). Using this PC, Knoppmyth installed and also runs fine (but it is too slow for what I want to use it for). So I suppose that the Knoppmyth CD should be okay.

Any other help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

The problem with the flashing cursor on first bootup after install has been solved.

I forgot to mention that there was a second hard drive (secondary master). I decided to disconnect it and then did a full auto install of Knoppmyth again and this time there were no problems!

Thanks tjc for pointing me in the right direction!

My system also will not boot from the HD after installing R4V5. I too have two physical disks in the machine, so I will try disabling one and then reinstalling to see if that works for me as well. If it does, then I would say that there is a bug in the KnoppMyth installer if the system has more than one physical disk.

I'll post an update later to indicate whether this solution works for me or not. Thanks.

Since I've got two disk and don't have any trouble booting, I'd guess more like a BIOS/hardware setup problem...