webdt.org

Hello,

If you own a WebDT 366 you may be having trouble getting Ubuntu to boot. You are not alone.

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/65263

Above is a link to my entry in Ubuntu's launchpad bug racking system. My entry is getting old and no one there is paying attention to it. In order to get Ubuntu devs to put attention to getting Ubuntu to work on the WebDT we need to let them know that there are a few of us using these.

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu

Will get you to the general area. Please feel free to register and start your own question. The more people they see who are asking for Geode support the more likely we will be to get it.

Made contact with an ubuntu developer. They have made a request that will help figure out why Ubuntu breaks graphics on boot. If someone has the opportunity please try start install or even boot up. When it fails reboot in live cd mode to a linux that you know to works on the DT. Once there look in the var folder and if you can just grab all the logs you see. Especially the ones about the Xserver or populating if udev. See the Ubuntu launchpad link in the first post to look at the request,

quotaholic

I haven't tried Ubuntu (and since I got NimbleX working, I prob won't), but my guess is that it's having the same problems as the slackware builds had when they were starting the X11 window manager... they were trying to force a screen resolution that the WebDT didn't like.

That's why it took me so long to get NimbleX working on the WebDT.  I had to manually all screen resolution settings from the .conf files --- that's my guess since those were the problems I faced whilst I was making NimbleX work.

When booting I tried both safe mode and passing vga=normal on the boot command at startup. That should have forced a 640x480 screen. While I could see the normal splash screen and the back and forth bouncing bar at a normal resolution, once that bar became a left to right progress indication things broke.

Whats odd about the way that this breaks is that one can not press ctl+alt+f_ to get to another tty. If it was an xorg.conf issue we should be able to ctl+alt+backspace and get to a text prompt. This just doesnt happen. If ubuntu booted in a verbose style it would be easier to isolate.

I wanted to try Fluxbuntu and Ubuntu Mini Remix as they are both sub 300 meg distro's. That and Debian had penmount drivers (with the right libs) in their apt repository which one can get to.

Ubuntu mini remix offers a link to a Ubuntu systems builder program off their site. When I saw it I though how cool would it be to build our own distribution With only what we need, easily updated, etc....

Again great work on getting NimbleX functioning 100 percent! Cant wait to use it myself.

quotaholic

quotaholic wrote: When booting I tried both safe mode and passing vga=normal on the boot command at startup. That should have forced a 640x480 screen.

Just a dumb question, have you tried setting vga=769 ? I had an issue on the knoppix live cd I was using to copy my drive image off the network and onto the harddrive, whereas when the hotplug indicator was progressing to the right of the screen, it would cut off and the screen would become difficult to read.

I'm unsure of the exact interpretation of "vga=normal", but 769 is explicitly 640x480. Might be at least worth a try.

You know something......... I dont think I did. I have only ever switched between 771 and normal for my two choices. Hmmm

quotaholic