SAB 6: as much fun as Windows at its worst. [Solved]

[halcyon]

I have spent the last few weeks trying to sort a Sabayon 6 machine and I am still not winning. I have been running Sabayon for 18 months + as a main machine, on and off. I have had a few problems from time to time; some I fixed with help, some made me abandon the OS for a while. I do not have a good knowledge of programming or code, so when I search the forum, sometimes the instructions are obscure to me. I like Sabayon when it works, but I find it harder than Windows to fix when it suddenly goes wrong (usually after updates). This time the problem started with the big updates for 6; Entropy/Sulphur went down. With help from forum I partly fixed this, but not right. I did a full re-install of 6 from disk. This worked well until I did the updates. Since then I have what appears to be a Xorg or driver problem. I have done fresh installs of both KDE and GNU, I have followed instructions from the forum about drivers but I am not getting anywhere. I have had Xorg problems on this machine and Sabayon in the past, but it used to offer a menu to choose Xvesa as alternative, so I kept working. This time I get a blank screen until I go to terminal. I am determined to beat this and learn in the process, but I feel it should not be this difficult for an "ordinary" user trying to escape the tyranny of Microsoft. Any simple instructions for help will be much appreciated.
I tried to follow the logfile instructions/sabutil but without success.
The machine in question is running a Celeron dual core with 2 Gb ram and an integrated Nvidia graphics on mobo. It has a partitioned 600 Gb hdd with one other Linux OS.
I am reluctant to abandon Sab again as I have put much time into getting it right, but other distros are starting to look very inviting for workability, stability, and usability as main machines, despite other drawbacks.
Regards, Bill
Solved

[micia]

I think that no OS is perfect, any OS has its drawback, its advantages and its obscurities, the best OS is the OS that has the drawbacks that you are able to fix or tolerate
I also think that there are very few people here that are expert programmers. If you don't understand something, or something is obscure in the instructions you receive, the best way to learn is asking for clarifications. Most of the time you don't get "programming instructions" in the forums, but just bash commands, they are by far easier to learn and to explain

I see that most of your posts are more about complaining than suggesting better solutions or asking for help, it is fine if you don't find Sabayon to suit your needs, but it would help to know what is not adequate for you, at least in this post you explained it

Could you describe better what have you already tried in order to get your card to work?
The problems with older Nvidia cards I read about are usually solved commenting out the line with UseEvents in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and rebooting.

[genfool]

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The machine in question is running a Celeron dual core with 2 Gb ram and an integrated Nvidia graphics on mobo.

I suspect that you have the driver bug, you should be able to ctrl alt f1 and log in as root, either remove the offending line in xorg.conf, or simply update, will fix it for you.
Your hardware suggest to me you would have a nvidia 7series card and was affected.

In fairness to sabayon, lxnay found the nvidia driver bug, sent the logs and cure upstream to nvidia. They are at least aware of it now.
I spoke with a person using pclos yesterday, he was hit with the same issue when he updated. It is not a sabayon issue, sabayon found the cure.

About your previous update, if you would have came into the irc channel and asked freenode #sabayon
I would bet a cookie, just needed one command to fix it right.

You need to state the problem clearly, and ask for help.
Complaining will not get anyone anywhere, in both issues you complained about, could be fixed faster then it took you to write the complaint.

[halcyon]

Sorry if I sound pissy but I don't know enough to make constructive suggestions; except maybe that when a major release is made it should be pretty bug free. I find I can't log in as root; perhaps in my haste in last re-install I made an error. I have done "equo update, e. upgrade, e. conf update, install x11 (old driver), rebooted. All to no avail. I am always reluctant to post on the forum (I think 4 posts ever) as I try to search for the fix from other posts first, as it should be. I will wait a few days to see if Nvidia fix the problem as you seem to think. Thank you all for your help.

[micia]

You are right about trying to find out a solution first, and if you do find your issue to be already discussed and solved, you are encouraged to follow the instructions (and ask for explaination if you are not sure about them), but don't be reluctant to ask for help if you need it, we are here to help users out

I do agree that Sabayon needs more knowledge and is more user error prone than other distributions, when I first tried it, the community made up for it.
Sabayon is relatively young as a distributions and its resources are limited, so maybe posting new ideas (there is a section for it in the forums) can help to get new and innovative things running, after all, in the homepage, you can read:
Sabayon Linux, the Users' Operating System

Coming back to your problem, usually it should be possible to log in as root, if your GUI does not start, you should be able to get a console by pressing:
Ctrl+Alt+F<number>
Linux has a number of "virtual consoles" when it boots.
The output you see from the boot sequence is on the virtual console 1 (technically speaking, tty1), the GUI starts, usually, on the virtual console 7 (tty7).
So, on boot, you automatically switch virtual console, from 1 to 7 and the GUI is started, so that you don't see "text" anymore.
If you get a black screen on boot, you should be able to switch back on console 1, by pressing:
Ctrl+Alt+F1
and login in text mode as root, or as any other user.

Can you do this, or you already tried and it failed?

[halcyon]

Already tried and failed. I struggled for a few days to follow instructions from forum by working through grub before I realised I could open terminal by Ctrl+alt+F1. Root login can not be authenticated by my usual password, so either I've made an error during install or something else is amiss. I have seen references to a huge Firefox 5 download; I tried this and thought it suspicious so cancelled. This came from a AU site. Could there be a connection? A direct FF5 download was quite small.
I appreciate your patience; you may realise that mine has been well tested by now:)

[micia]

a firefox update cannot break the root password, I read some issues with GRUB2 about root password disappearance:
viewtopic.php?f=57&t=24450
but honestly, it never happened to me.
However if you have sudo enabled, it could save the day.
Try to login as a standard user instead of root, and try this:

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sudo passwd


You will get the first prompt for a password, that is the password requested by sudo to execute the command passwd as root (you have to enter your standard user password here), then you will get the request for the new root password and the confirmation.
When done, you should have your brand new root password to login with.

[halcyon]

That appears to have worked. But what next? Back to equo update??
PS still not root!

[micia]

the next step would be editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf, replacing:

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   Option       "UseEvents" "True"


with:

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#   Option       "UseEvents" "True"


you have to be root to edit that file.
To edit a file using console, you can use nano:
(as root)

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nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf


the instructions to save a file and exit will appear on the console:
ctrl+O = save
ctrl+X = exit

when this is done, a reboot should make your GUI work.


You still can't login as root, after changing the password?
Does any error message appear to indicate the possible cause?

[halcyon]

the next step would be editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf, replacing:

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   Option       "UseEvents" "True"


with:

Code: Select all

#   Option       "UseEvents" "True"


you have to be root to edit that file.
To edit a file using console, you can use nano:
(as root)

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nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf


the instructions to save a file and exit will appear on the console:
ctrl+O = save
ctrl+X = exit

when this is done, a reboot should make your GUI work.


You still can't login as root, after changing the password?
Does any error message appear to indicate the possible cause?

Hi. After a nights sleep I eventually got into root. Thank you. Where/how do I get the "option" prompt? When I type 2select all" I get a > . "help" is not helping as I have no idea what to insert after the commands.