fvwm problem when installing Debian Etch on an old Thinkpad 600 - Setup

Hi There !

My old TP600 used to run perfectly well on RedHat 7.2. with fvwm.
Persistent failures in trying to install wpa_supplicant on that system,
as well as on RedHat 7.3, convinced me to try installing Debian Etch.

This Etch system is now up and running... except that I have been so far
unable to run Xwindow on it. If, on the install process, I choose the
office environment, then I get Gnome installed, with very poor
results : the screen width is not filled 100% (maybe only 95%), the icons
and caracters are of a very poor quality. It appears quite well that the
MagicGraph 128XD chipset (NM2160) is not properly setup, even though it is
being reckognised in the log file. I have therefore tried a new install of
Etch, ignoring the office environment option. This worked all right, with
no graphic environment in the end. I then installed ffvm using apt-get
install process, adding whatever packages were being recommended with it.
I also installed fonts, xserver-xorg, xserver-xorg-video-neomagic,
gsynaptics, qsynaptics etc.. All this being done, I tried various configs
using 'dpkg-reconfigure -plow xserver.org', with no success. For instance,
with :

X server driver : neomagic
video memory available : left blank as recommended (but I have also tested
128K). I will not mention parameters regarding keyboard and mice
configuration. As for screen, it is "generics", and I checked 1024x768
only (other def options have been tried with worse results). As for
Horizontal and vertical defs, I confirmed the detected values, which seem
to correspond to official values for this hardware : 28-64 KHz, and 43-60
Hz. As far as color depth, I checked "16" bits, but I also tried 15, and
even 8 and 24)

As a result, the X init process seems to start as it used to with fvwm on
RedHat 7.2 and 7.3. With the above mentioned parameters, the graphic
screen does fill all the available space. But I get stuck on a meshed
aspect, and no icons or text appear, which is exactly what happened at
start on my older system, except that it stayed that way only a few
seconds before changing to a normal non meshed clean and good aspect
with icons and text. On what I now get stuck, a left mouse clicking
displays an "internal menu" with "xterm", "debian menu". Debian menu and other
menus display screen boxes seem to work, "quit fvwm" works too, but
"xterm" does not open any
xterm window.

Thanks in advance for helping me configure my fvwm graphic environment on
that old laptop with Debian Etch

Bernard :
>
> My old TP600 used to run perfectly well on RedHat 7.2. with fvwm.
> [snip]
> being reckognised in the log file. I have therefore tried a new
> install of Etch, ignoring the office environment option. This
> worked all right, with

fwiw, that's how I install it, albeit with aptitude.

> no graphic environment in the end. I then installed ffvm using
> apt-get install process, adding whatever packages were being
> recommended with it. I also installed fonts, xserver-xorg,
> xserver-xorg-video-neomagic, gsynaptics, qsynaptics etc.. All this
> being done, I tried various configs using 'dpkg-reconfigure -plow
> xserver.org', with no success. For instance,

You've a choice of the free nv driver, the blob from nvidia requiring
a recompiled kernel (not all that difficult), or vesa should work.

> screen does fill all the available space. But I get stuck on a
> meshed aspect, and no icons or text appear, which is exactly what
> happened at

I don't understand what you mean by meshed aspect.

In my experience, the best way to config fvwm is to cp all the system
config from /etc/fvwm into your home dir, and take control of it
there. You may be missing fvwm related packages

> start on my older system, except that it stayed that way only a few
> seconds before changing to a normal non meshed clean and good
> aspect with icons and text. On what I now get stuck, a left mouse
> clicking displays an "internal menu" with "xterm", "debian
> menu". Debian menu and other menus display screen boxes seem to
> work, "quit fvwm" works too, but "xterm" does not open any xterm
> window.

Is xterm installed?

> Thanks in advance for helping me configure my fvwm graphic
> environment on that old laptop with Debian Etch

I think fluxbox is much easier to deal with for essentially the same
footprint and interface. Install that and get it working, and work on
fvwm config in your spare time.


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