Debian Xterm problem

LoLth

well, I finally got around to installing Debian. it is being installed on 2 machines.

specs:
packard bell, p3 450 , 4gb disk space, ati rage 128 graphics card (64mb ram)

Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop , 10gb HD space, ati rage 128 graphics card (128mb ram)

The install went ok, vanilla on the packard bell nad idepci on the laptop.

However,

PC:
Xterm will not work. Error message: nice value 0 set instead of expected -10
No screen configured.

I selected xdm as the handler for xfree86 (by the way, the version is 4.0.3 which seems a bit old, the ESAT ftp server ISO's of debian seem a bit out of date....).

The laptop uses gdm and can sometimes get the GUI up and running but the touchpad will not work and using the function key to enable the "numeric kepypad" doesnt allow you to click properly when you go to configure the desktop etc. It also gets the same error message as above (more often than not).

Another issue is that the laptop, even though it is connected to the home network and can ping, ftp etc to the internet cannot resolve any Domain names so the apt-get dist-upgrade command doesnt work , even if I change the source.list file to use IP addresses instead of domain names.....

Now, I am pretty sure that the Debian distro is a fair bit beyond my capabilities but I really would prefer to find a solution rather than just give up.... any ideas?

Is there a way to get a version listing of the installed packages?

What is the latest stable build of debian and apart from using jigdo (which refuses to work for me) where is the best place to d'load it?

Is a reinstall with the latest version the best solution?

leeroybrown

Xterm will not work. Error message: nice value 0 set instead of expected -10
No screen configured.

If you asked a Debian user to point out the standard debain installers reatest weakness they'd probably say xfree86 configuration. Does /etc/X11/Xf86config-4 exist? (the older XF86config is probably there)

cannot resolve any Domain names

Have you added any name servers to /etc/resolv.conf?

Example:

nameserver 159.134.237.6

What is the latest stable build of debian

The current stable release version is 3.0r2 which is the second updated release of 3.0 (woody). This is where the fun starts. Debian 'stable' is actually quite (well very) old at the moment. This is because once a Debian release goes 'stable', it only changes for essential reasons and the last time debian went stable was a long time ago (Jul 2002).

People who run debian and want more up to date software generally either install backported packages for specific things (http://www.apt-get.org/ is a search engine for them) or upgrade to either the 'testing' or 'unstable' branches. There is also an 'experimental' branch now. The good news is that the next release version 'sarge' is currently moving (slowly - debian is like a glacier at times) towards a stable freeze point and should be released as soon as a few issues are resolved.

LoLth

/etc/X11/Xf86config-4 is there alright. I also tried editing the default setting in that file to 16 rahter than 24 bit colour (I read somewhere that that is a possible solution).



As far as the dns goes, the laptop was connected to a network where the default gateway also served as the DNS (a zyxel 635 modem that gets it's DNS settings from IOL and passes these on to the network clients).

Tried adding it's IP address as a dns entry in resolv.conf (10.0.1.1) but still no joy.

Yep, the Esat ftp site has the jun 2002 version of debian. I think I'll download a later, less stable, version and try it. Hopefully it will pick up the inspiron touchpad - that's really annoying by the way

tomk

I'd suggest reinstalling both machines using the latest beta of the Debian Installer. This way, you will have a choice of branches - I'd recommend testing(sarge) for the moment.

For your laptop in particular, check out Linux on Laptops - there are 15 entries for the I4000 alone, so it's likely that someone has solved the touchpad problem already.