[K12OSN] Re: Some clients get Gray X Screen

[Dan]

On Jan 11, 2008 4:38 PM, Peter Scheie <peter at scheie.homedns.org> wrote:
> I ran into the same head scratcher a while back: no gdm.conf, a custom.conf
> file, and yet a system that *does* work.  As I recall, custom.conf is the file
> you want to modify.  I think it might be a Red Hat thing, and/or a philosophy
> that "gdm.conf isn't usually modified but since it is sometimes, we'll call it
> custom.conf instead."  Mostly I recall thinking that the decision made things
> more confusing.  One of the great things one can say about Unix is that what one
> learned 20 years ago is still relevant; unfortunately, that's rarely the case
> with the GUI's on Linux. </rant>
>
> Peter
>
>
>
>
> Amy Contreras wrote:
> > On 10/01/2008, Amy Contreras <acontreras at walkerville.k12.mi.us> wrote:
> >> Ever since I've changed the XSERVER to VESA in the lts.conf file I've
> >> been able to get most of my Dell GX100 clients to work.  Although I
> >> still have a few that get the gray screen with an X cursor.  I can't
> >> quite figure it out
> >
> > AFAIK If the xserver was failing you would not get  gray screen with an
> > X. This could be some other problem. See chapter on grayX at
> > http://ltsp.mirrors.tds.net/pub/ltsp/docs/ltsp-4.1-en.html#AEN965
> >
> > Is this happening randomly? If yes then maybe you need to increase
> > number of sessions in the gdm.conf file. Or check if allocating lesser
> > memory in BIOS for video will work. And try i810 driver instead of vesa
> > for the GX100's...
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Sudev Barar
> >
> > Read http://blog.sudev.in for topics ranging from here to there.
> >
> >
> > Sudev,
> > Yes you're correct, the xserver was a separate issue and adding vesa
> > took care of it. I probably didn't need to mention that.  The clients
> > that get the grayX screen have always had this problem since initially
> > trying to get them to boot to the server.  It's not random. I tried what
> > you mentioned and neither of those suggestions worked for me. When I
> > replaced vesa with i810 it went back to giving me the xserver failed
> > error.
> >
> > Also, when trying to locate the gdm.conf file it's not there. I thought
> > it should be in the /etc/X11/gdm folder.  However, I found the
> > /etc/gdm/custom.conf file with a GDM configuration.  Should I recreate
> > the gdm.conf file using custom.conf? Although gdm appears to be running
> > because I can login as I did before, only some clients still get the
> > grayX screen.  Sorry if this sounds silly as I'm a bit confused why I
> > don't have gdm.conf. I'm still a newb:)
> >
> > Thanks again,
> > Amy Contreras
> >

We have had similar issues with a few of the GX110(i810) boxes running
in our setup.  The only "real" work around, besides running Ubuntu and
LTSP5 which works almost flawlessly with them, was too add a cheap pci
video card and disable the onboard in the bios.  We used some old
Trident 4MB cards and they work fine.
  Our problems included complete system lockups with no error messages
just a clean reboot message from the manual reset and the Xserver
crashing in all sorts of fun ways.
  I know this is not the cleanest solution but it worked, I swear we
tried just about everything else.  A word to the wise, if you do go
this route pass the -noacpi to the client boot options or sometimes
the sound wont work along with some other fun stuff.

HTH
-- 
Dan Maranville