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From: Tony Houghton on 4 May 2008 14:14
The PSU in my sister's PSU went pop (literally) after a recent power
surge. I'm hoping the rest of the system survived as it's an Enermax
PSU, not a cheap & nasty one.

To keep them going and give them time to get a good deal on a PSU online
instead of rushing out to Maplins we thought it would be a good idea to
transplant the HD into a rarely used spare PC of theirs. Ubuntu should
take that in its stride except it will be changing from NVidia to ATI
graphics, so what's the easiest way to make Gutsy automatically
reconfigure the X server, like it does at installation? If it can be
done with one command they should hopefully be able to manage the whole
job without my having to go round there. I'm thinking that if I got them
to type sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg it might ask loads of
questions about the monitor etc so does Ubuntu have a special command to
set it up without user intervention?

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

From: Ian Smith on 6 May 2008 17:26
On Tue, 6 May 2008 14:38:09 +0100
Paul Martin <pm(a)zetnet.net> wrote:

> In article <20080506143047.60d92a20(a)tiber.realh.co.uk>,
> Tony Houghton wrote:
> > In
> > <df2dc373-470a-4eee-9ee4-98e4aa6e07df(a)e53g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
> > Ian <ian.groups(a)btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> >> If not, I'd just boot the thing and nano xorg.conf when the X
> >> server falls over. It's what I did when I changed cards.
>
> > I did end up going round there anyway, so that's just what I did
> > except I used vim.
>
> Vim might be too abrasive.

Perhaps some Cream might help?
From: Geoffrey Clements on 6 May 2008 04:45
"Tony Houghton" <h(a)realh.co.uk> wrote in message
news:20080504191438.6106e4c7(a)tiber.realh.co.uk...
> The PSU in my sister's PSU went pop (literally) after a recent power
> surge. I'm hoping the rest of the system survived as it's an Enermax
> PSU, not a cheap & nasty one.
>
> To keep them going and give them time to get a good deal on a PSU online
> instead of rushing out to Maplins we thought it would be a good idea to
> transplant the HD into a rarely used spare PC of theirs. Ubuntu should
> take that in its stride except it will be changing from NVidia to ATI
> graphics, so what's the easiest way to make Gutsy automatically
> reconfigure the X server, like it does at installation? If it can be
> done with one command they should hopefully be able to manage the whole
> job without my having to go round there. I'm thinking that if I got them
> to type sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg it might ask loads of
> questions about the monitor etc so does Ubuntu have a special command to
> set it up without user intervention?
>

They could run up the live cd and copy xorg.conf from that (but that's
probably too hard to explain :-) or perhaps do the dpkg-reconfigure
xserver-xorg like you suggest whilst you're on the end of a telephone.

ISTR that there is a setting for debconf that means the reconfigures are all
mostly automatic (does Ubuntu use debconf?) but it's been such a long time
since I twiddled with such things that I don't remember the details but it's
probably something like dpkg-reconfigure debconf.

--
Geoff



From: Ian on 6 May 2008 08:54
On 4 May, 19:14, Tony Houghton <h...(a)realh.co.uk> wrote:

> ... we thought it would be a good idea to
> transplant the HD into a rarely used spare PC of theirs. Ubuntu should
> take that in its stride except it will be changing from NVidia to ATI
> graphics,

Can you not transplant the graphics card? Or if there's an interface
mismatch (PCI vs AGP?) buy a cheap NVidia card from eBay for the
meantime?

If not, I'd just boot the thing and nano xorg.conf when the X server
falls over. It's what I did when I changed cards.

Ian
From: Tony Houghton on 6 May 2008 09:30
In <df2dc373-470a-4eee-9ee4-98e4aa6e07df(a)e53g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
Ian <ian.groups(a)btinternet.com> wrote:

> On 4 May, 19:14, Tony Houghton <h...(a)realh.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > ... we thought it would be a good idea to
> > transplant the HD into a rarely used spare PC of theirs. Ubuntu
> > should take that in its stride except it will be changing from
> > NVidia to ATI graphics,
>
> Can you not transplant the graphics card?

The main graphics card is a 5900 something which uses a lot more power
than the Radeon 7000. The spare PC has an mATX PSU and it's already
powering more than it had to when it started life as a Tiny P2 so I
didn't think that would be a good idea.

> Or if there's an interface
> mismatch (PCI vs AGP?) buy a cheap NVidia card from eBay for the
> meantime?

Funnily enough we came across a modest looking NVidia in the box of
discarded junk while looking for a network card, but by then I'd already
reconfigured X.

> If not, I'd just boot the thing and nano xorg.conf when the X server
> falls over. It's what I did when I changed cards.

I did end up going round there anyway, so that's just what I did except
I used vim.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

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