Re: X server will not start up after driver "upgrade"
Hi Brandon,
Brandon Kuczenski wrote:
> I am running a nearly-current debian testing distribution. This evening
> I made the mistake of trying to "upgrade" the driver for my nvidia
> integrated video adapter on my motherboard. The appeal of seeing openGL
> screensaver hacks outweighed my mistrust of nvidia's software policy. I
> downloaded and ran nvidia's user-friendly driver installation program.
Ugh, proprietary software. <shudder>
> Sure enough, the 3d acceleration worked, but the maximum screen size I
> could set was vastly reduced (from 1792x1344 maximum to 1400x1050
> maximum) with some message about insufficient bandwidth. The nvidia FAQ
> said I could disable the bandwidth test using
> Option "NoBandWidthTest" "True"
> in my XF86Config-4 file, but that it was 'not recommended.'
>
> I did it anyway, and it crashed my computer. So I rebooted into
> recovery mode, switched back to the open 'nv' driver instead of the
> closed 'nvidia' driver, and rebooted. Now I cannot start an X session.
> I tried re-installing the nvidia driver and unfortunately, the situation
> is the same. No X session with either driver.
I think you may be misunderstanding where the fault is here - as the
paragraphs below show, X starts fine. If you get a gdm login, or see the
X cursor, X has started and is running. The problem occurs after that.
> With no X session running, from a console, as myself, I type 'startx'.
> The screen flashes, I get the 'X' mouse cursor in the middle of the
> screen and the debian splash, but no little icons (gnome-panel,
> nautilus, etc...). Shortly thereafter I get dumped back to the
> console. No errors are reported. The output of the 'startx' command is
> included here:
(snip)
> Before I got to the console 'startx' level, I was running from within
> gdm, and the problem manifested itself in the same way. I would get the
> standard greeter, select my username and enter my password, and the same
> behavior would happen: Screen flashes, debian splash, but no icons, and
> shortly thereafer, the X session would quit. But I would also get the
> [not helpful, oxymoronic] log output in syslog:
>From the two paragraphs above it seems very likely that the fault lies
with the desktop environment you use. From your mention of nautilus I
presume that this is gnome? Perhaps you could try choosing a different
environment from gdm, just to confirm this.
> Strangely, root can start an X session. Another local user can start an
> X session. But my user cannot. I could create another test user to see
> if it could start an X session, but that seems so artificial as to be
> useless.
Mmm, this points to gnome not starting properly with your user. Seems
like something got clobbered when your machine crashed earlier on. Gnome
has loads of config folders stored in your user's home area; one way to
get gnome working again would probably be to move those folders to a
safe place and try again - gnome should recreate some default settings.
I would try .gconf*, .gnome* and .gtk* if you have them. You can then
either try to repair your original config files, or set up gnome again
using the new ones.
> I have a hunch that there's a lock file or something, somewhere,
> leftover from the session that crashed the computer, that I need to
> delete, in order to enable the server startup. But I haven't found
> anything.
>
> I tried apt-get remove xserver-xfree86 ; apt-get install xserver-xfree86
> but to no avail. I really don't know where to look next. Any help
> would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Brandon
Hope this helps,
Richard
--
Richard Boyce
SysEng, CCDC
http://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk
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