No video display after installing debian

[controlyourdog]

Hi my computer boots up but just as its about to load debian I lose video output. Where do I start with troubleshooting this? Thank you.

Also there was an option to install debain as "graphical installation" or just "installation". I chose just "installation", whats the difference? I dont know if that has anything to do with why i cant get output.

[hazel]

It doesn't directly affect it; this choice only controls how the installer works. What matters after installation is:
a) Whether you actually installed a graphical desktop such as gnome or lxde
b) Whether you have any problems with your video card driver that are preventing X from working.

I would start by logging in at the text terminal and typing startx. If you get "Command not found", then X is not installed and you will have to install it. Log in as root and type apt-get install gnome.

If you see a partial attempt to get to a desktop, then it is just a matter of posting up the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and someone can help you find out where and why X broke. Don't worry, this kind of glitch is usually easy to fix.

[controlyourdog]

hi thanks for the reply, *edit* ok It says gnome is already newest version

[hazel]

What happens when you log in and type startx?

[controlyourdog]

ctrl alt f1

"Loginave
Password:

dave@debian:~$ startx

xauth: creating new authority file /home/dave/.Xauthority
xauth: creating new authority file /home/dave/.Xauthority

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again.

Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 keygiving up.
xinit: Resource temporarily unavailable (errno 11): unable to connect to x server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error."

Is there much point in installing all 5 DVDs? I did but is it just for extra apps?

[controlyourdog]

Also does it make any difference if im running i386 on a 64bit processor? I read somewhere its compatible but not recommended?

[hazel]

xauth: creating new authority file /home/dave/.Xauthority
xauth: creating new authority file /home/dave/.Xauthority

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again.

So try typing rm /tmp/.X0-lock and then startx.

Is there much point in installing all 5 DVDs? I did but is it just for extra apps?

I wouldn't install the whole of Debian unless I had a very big hard drive. Everything essential is on the first disk, The others, as you have guessed, contain alternative apps.
Debian runs a "popularity contest" for apps (for which you may register if you like) and puts them on the discs in order of popularity with users.

[controlyourdog]

Now I'm getting fatal server error cannot establish any listening sockets make sure x server isn't already running

[hazel]

Well, it looks more and more to me as if X is actually running, whether you can see it or not. A quick test is to type

ps ax|grep X

. This uses the grep utility to extract the relevant line from a list of all running processes.

If you do get a line for /usr/bin/X, then X is running. In which case, if you can't see anything on the screen, you have a video card problem.

The next stage after that will be to post the contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log so that people more expert on hardware than I am can see what X actually reports about your hardware. They'll probably want to see your Xorg configuration file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) as well.