[CS-FSLUG] How do I fix screen configuration from the command line?

[Ruth Marlene Friesen]

Hi Fred and friends,
I'm ashamed that I only seem to have time to pipe up when I'm in trouble, but 
I do have a lot on the go - as a rule. Now they've ground to a halt again!

Thanks, Fred, for guiding me to SuSE 9.3 in September. Whereas I had  referred 
to my Mandrake last fall  as my candy-store, I was getting nicely settled 
into SuSE and told some friends it was more like a very secure and pretty 
castle. Much bigger and better in every way.

I did have some email sending problems but eventually found my glitches in the 
settings window. I was up to full speed with all my projects, and just had 2 
or 3 areas to sort out yet. Then yesterday morning I'm afraid I caused a big 
crash. If blame has to be assigned before we can proceed, I'll accept it.

I'd seen upon logging in the last few days some lines about my screen 
resolution being wrong, so yesterday on booting up, I decided to quickly go 
into SaX2 and fix that. I'd added an extra option of 800 x 600 resolution, 
hoping to get the system fonts to increase in size (as they did in Mandrake), 
but that made no difference. Unfortunately, I may have deleted the wrong one. 
It didn't seem to like my change on test, but I decided to save and reboot to 
see how it would look.

Well! Then I couldn't get in past login any more. No how! I've copied out the 
error messages by hand, and hope they don't lose anything in the 
transcription;

"Your dma on the hard drive is turned off. It may really slwo down the fsck 
process." (I can't find that 'dma' in Bios).

There were also lines about  --
....................................................................
"using config file /etc/X11/Xorg.cong
(WW) MGA. No matching Device section for instance (BUS ID PCI:1:0:0) found.
(EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
(EE) Device(s) deleted, but none match base in the config file.
Fatal server error: no screens found
Please contact the Xorg Foundation support at http://wiki.Xorg for help.
Please also check the logfile at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log for additional 
information.
X10: fatal 10 error 104 (connection reset by peer) on x server ".0.0"
after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining."
................................................................

I could still get in as far as the login at the command line, but I didn't 
know what to do there to solve the problem. (Seems terminal work is next on 
my learning curve!)

So, I tried a few other things; 
a Safe install of SuSE, then the Repair option. It verified everything, but 
did not mention the screen settings. Upon finish, it rebooted and brought me 
back to login. Where I was stuck again.

I tried a totally fresh install, and downloading updates & patches. Got back 
to login, but still no screen detected!

I started a Mandrake install, then got cold feet about overwriting my files, 
so went back to SuSE install, and managed to shrink down the 30  GB section I 
hadn't really used yet. Then I went back to Mandrake and installed it on the 
empty section. I needed a way to get online and get HELP! Turned out I had no 
cursor, which has happened before on some installs of Mdk.

Then I remembered I have the System Rescue CD, and SuSE Live CD and Puppy. I 
tried all, but I couldn't figure out how to use the Rescue, and neither of 
the Live CDs could look at my hd.

In the evening I tried the Mandrake install all over again. This time I got 
in, and was even able to create a bootloader that allowed me to add SuSE to 
the menu! Voila! (But nope, it doesn't get me into it yet).

I spent the rest of the evening looking for solutions and commands to fix the 
Xorg server from the commandline, but I am really in way over my head here.

I praise God that I was able to get off two publications for our Tract Mission 
on Monday night, by staying up past midnight. This morning I managed to get 
out my inspirational blog/ezine online, but now I'm back wrestling with this 
problem.

This morning I was going to try to open Yast or saX2 from the commandline, but 
now my new bootloader has messed up my login process to SuSE. So I'm 
wondering if it is possible to do this from a root Konsole in Mandrake?

Mandrake cannot "See" anything on the SuSE parts of the hard drives. So I 
imagine I'll have to start another SuSE install to get back a command line, 
right? But if I do, what exactly shall I try there?

I did see on LinuxQuestions.org, that someone was advised to use;
 yum update xorg-x11
to fix a bad xorg server - but will that restore screen settings?

Has anyone else been through this before?

Fred, your installs always go perfect, so you've never seen this before, have 
you? :) On second thought, you've done some fine rescues, so perhaps you 
have.

While I'm searching online and studying command tutorials, I'll keep an eye 
open for help from this Group too.


Blessings & Many Thanks in advance,
Ruth