Debian and iBook - video problems

[Mark Fairchild]

I'm new to Linux, and I've just finished a network install of Debian etch
to an dual USB, G3, 500MHz iBook. The installation seemed to go fine, but
when I boot up, what I'm getting is very strange looking screen. There's a
large horizontal line that divides the screen in half, and there are two
vertical lines that divide the screen into thirds or so. Nothing is
visible, except the left-hand third of the screen - the rest of the screen
is black. In the visible area, I can see enough of an actual screen to see
that it is asking for the username, so when I enter that and the password, I
then get to the desktop - but again with only a narrow strip of the actual
screen functioning along the left hand edge. I can see the "computer" icon,
my "home" folder and the Trash icon. (There's also a duplicate of this
image that appears below the horizontal line.) I can see the mouse, and it
does respond. I can even activate a drop-down menu - it would seem the
"Desktop" menu is where I might be able to change video settings - but then
I can't see the menu!

Is there some kind of boot option I can use? I have no idea how to do this.

[Anton Ertl]

Post by Mark Fairchild
I'm new to Linux, and I've just finished a network install of Debian etch
to an dual USB, G3, 500MHz iBook. The installation seemed to go fine, but
when I boot up, what I'm getting is very strange looking screen. There's a
large horizontal line that divides the screen in half, and there are two
vertical lines that divide the screen into thirds or so. Nothing is
visible, except the left-hand third of the screen - the rest of the screen
is black. In the visible area, I can see enough of an actual screen to see
that it is asking for the username, so when I enter that and the password, I
then get to the desktop - but again with only a narrow strip of the actual
screen functioning along the left hand edge. I can see the "computer" icon,
my "home" folder and the Trash icon. (There's also a duplicate of this
image that appears below the horizontal line.) I can see the mouse, and it
does respond. I can even activate a drop-down menu - it would seem the
"Desktop" menu is where I might be able to change video settings - but then
I can't see the menu!
Is there some kind of boot option I can use? I have no idea how to do this.

The typical way to deal with this is to switch to one of the text mode
virtual terminals (usually, with Ctrl-Alt-F1...Ctrl-Alt-F6, you may or
may not have to press the Fn key). Then you can try to do things such as

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Or you can edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf directly and see how well the
xorg.conf works with

X :1

This will just give you a mesh screen and a mouse cursor, but should
be enough to see if the xorg.conf works. Stop that X server with
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Once you have an xorg.conf that works, you
restart the main X server, typically by restarting the display
manager, e.g.,

/etc/init.d/gdm restart #if you use gdm as display manager

Directly editing the xorg.conf is a rather involved topic; if you want
to go that way, read the xorg.conf man page; you may also find help at
some howtos.

- anton