Dell Poweredge 2850, X not working

[facade]

I'm posting this request in hardware because I have tried 2 different distro's on the same hardware and have the same problem with both. If this belongs in Servers, moderators, please shift the post.

I have a Dell Poweredge 2850 :
- Dual Xeon 2.something Ghz
- 4G Ram
- 800G raid array
- ATI Radeon 7000-M VGA 16MB

The problem goes like this. The dell server has been running a command line only, open suse 10, web server for some time with no problems. Now I need to run some virtual servers under vmware's vmserver, so I need X. I re-installed Open Suse with apparently no problems, until it goes to load X. As soon as X loads, I the monitor shuts down as if not receiving any signal. I then re-installed opensuse again with lower graphic settings, same thing. I booted safe mode, did a YOU (yast online update), still same problem. Opened up and mucked around with xorg.conf file, still have same problem.
I then decided, since dell supports red-hat enterprise, I'd try FC5. The graphical installer has the same problem(monitor going into sleep mode/no video output from computer).

Any suggestions ?
Thanks,
Dan

[facade]

Well, I found a sorta fix/workaround.
The monitor port in the front of the server seems to output X and graphical installers, where the back one displays the command line.
If anyone discovers a true fix for this, it would be much appreciated.
I hope this might be of help to anyone with similar problems to mine.

[davtom]

Hi There,

I have the very same problem with my poweredge 2850 (Fedora core 4).
If I anable X with startx somethimes (not always) I get a black screen.
If this happens, the machine (actually I have two identical machines that behaves in the same way) is still reachable via Network. If I run "top" from another machine connected via ethernet cable, I can see that the X process is using almost all the resources. Kill -9 does dot kill the X process and the only solution is to reboot the machine, hoping that the problem does not appear at next start.

Can anybody help me?
Thank you very much because I have to use these machines for a very reliable and professional service.

Feel free to post to
davide.tomassini@virgilio.it.

Regards,
Davide T.

[facade]

Once I had solved the issue of which monitor port the dell had decided to use, both OpenSuse and FC5 ran (and have been running) well for sometime now. Not that I restart it very often since trying different installations. It is now finally on OpenSuse 10, running 2 virtual servers under VMServer.
Unfortunatly Dell do not offically support any linux but Red Hat Enterprise, there is some community installation prep disks out for various distro's, but I found I didn't need them anyway.
As your problem is intermittant, it will be a difficult one to track down. Prehaps you need to startx and once you have it running, not to log out (crappy solution I know) or change the distro and see if you still have problems. If you need a specific distro for something, run it in VMWare's vmserver (there is a brand new version out which is very good).
Well I hope this helps, also, when/if you get the black screen, try plugging another monitor into the front monitor port and see if you get anything there.

Good Luck,
Dan

[davtom]

Thank you Daniel,

Reducing the graphic resolution to 800x600, the number of colors from " millions' to " thousents" and setting a generic monitor, the problem does not appear anylonger.

I have still one small glitch on one of the two servers: when I log out from the graphical interface it hangs for about 40 seconds before asking for confirmation.

When you refer to the monitor port, I guess you refer to the front or back video port.
so far I had always the same behaviours from both, both how can I select only the back/front one?

Thank you.

Ciao,
Davide T.

[BlueNote]

Thank you Daniel,

Reducing the graphic resolution to 800x600, the number of colors from " millions' to " thousents" and setting a generic monitor, the problem does not appear anylonger.

I have still one small glitch on one of the two servers: when I log out from the graphical interface it hangs for about 40 seconds before asking for confirmation.

When you refer to the monitor port, I guess you refer to the front or back video port.
so far I had always the same behaviours from both, both how can I select only the back/front one?

Thank you.

Ciao,
Davide T.

Hi,

I have a same problem. How do you reduce the resolution to 800x600 and color ?

Thanks in advance.

-BlueNote