Yesterday I tried antiX-12 on an old laptop.

Specs
======
300 MHz Pentium II
256 MB RAM
Video: Chips and Technologies HiQVideo 69000
Monitor: NEC MultiSync FE770 (external monitor)


Instead of a desktop I got a black screen with an"X" in the middle. That was using the default and also the menu entry for low RAM plus VESA, etc.

Any suggestions on how I can fix this?

Phil

when at that screen,
press control alt f2
log in as root, password:root,
try service slim restart or startx

it apears to me that x starts a you have a little x in the middle of the screen.

Hi Dave,

Thank you for your help. startx gave me a plain-vanilla IceWM. Although it's a favorable result, I am not sure that it solves the problem.

I noticed another possible problem-- acpid was running. That was a surprise since I thought I disabled it with acpi=off. ACPI doesn't work right on this laptop so I need to disable it and use APM instead.

Phil

ok try startx as regular user.
This should pull up the antix icewm with rox default.
If it does not, and you are stuck at an black screen with an X again, then we need to troubleshoot the default configuration of icewm (which slim is set to autologin to)
The easiest way would be to disable the autologin and default user lines in / etc/slim.conf
To do that, press control alt f1
login as root password root
type: nano / etc/slim.conf (note remove the"" between"/" and"etc". This is a forum bug)
in nano press: control w
type: default_user (press enter)
there should be a line like
default_user demo
put a # in front to comment it out
#default_user demo
then press: control w
type: auto_login (press enter)
there should be a line like
auto_login yes
put a # in front to comment it out
#auto_login yes
Make sure all instances of the above where commented out (in case there are multiple entries)
press: control x
press: y
press: enter
then at the command prompt type: service slim restart

This should place you at a login screen, from there you can toggle to another WM by pressing f1 then log in with username demo password demo
If you still recieve the black screen with an X rather than the login screen, the slim configuration must be messed up a little. The solution for this will depend on the results of startx as user and the disabling the auto login for slim.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the reply. BTW, this isn't an HDD install that I am working with. I am using antiX as a live CD only. However, if I can get it working reasonably well I will do a"frugal" install. Just thought I should mention that in case it matters.

Your reply reminded me of something. Before trying startx I did a little exploration to see what I could learn. When I ran the users command I was told that only root was logged in. Is that normal? I thought that the demo user would also be logged in.

Phil

uhm, if you ran the command as root... only root will show.
However if you ran the command logged in as demo, then it should show demo.

The live cd thing, does not really matter at the moment. It would only really matter if you were makeing extensive changes / needed a reboot. I kind of figured you were using a live cd anyway, that is why the instructions where using usernames root,demo and passwords root,demo __{{emoticon}}__

Hi Dave,

Dave wrote:ok try startx as regular user.
This should pull up the antix icewm with rox default.

That worked. Can I just disable slim? On my Debian Squeeze system I use sysv-rc-conf to disable GDM so I can log in via a console. Do you think that approach will that work in a frugal install with persistence enabled?

Phil

Should be able to, you may need to install sysv-rc-conf though.
Also, seeing how startx works, that means the default desktop also works.
You may be able to fix slim, by running update-default-desktop or change-default-desktop. It should be in the control center -> session -> Edit login options.
I think in 12 there was a bug that would not allow the program to run from control center, but running it from the terminal as the error says will work. (I cannot remember what / how that was done though)

pcalvert wrote: That worked. Can I just disable slim? On my Debian Squeeze system I use sysv-rc-conf to disable GDM so I can log in via a console. Do you think that approach will that work in a frugal install with persistence enabled?

Phil

It will once persistence is set up. If you do not want/need slim, you could of course just remove it.

sysv-rc-conf is included in antiX-12 base and full.

Thanks for the help guys! I am posting this message from a frugal install of antiX-12 base. Oddly enough, I didn't have any trouble with antiX-12 base. So it looks antiX-12 base doesn't have that problem, or maybe the problem only occurs when slim tries to load IceWM. I didn't try fluxbox on antiX-12, so I am not sure which one it is.

Phil