Re: X server will not start up after driver "upgrade"
On (08/07/05 10:56), Brandon Kuczenski wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2005, Richard Boyce wrote:
> >>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.
> >
>
>
> Thanks for your response and your insight. I performed a few more tests
> (sad that "starting my computer" is now tantamount to running tests) and
> found:
> - for my user, from gdm, the result is effectively the same for Gnome,
> KDE, and Xfce -- I get a blank screen (or the debian splash) with a mouse
> cursor which still responds to mouse movement, and then about 15 seconds
> later I get kicked back to the gdm greeter.
> - the computer has two other normal local users, who can both login from
> gdm normally.
> - root cannot login from gdm (default security settings) but can start
> its own X session from console.
>
> So I agree with you that there is something wrong with my user, but it's
> somehow lower-level than Gnome, but higher-level than X. What's there?
>
> I could, I suppose, try creating a new user, deleting the old user, and
> then changing the UID of the new user (I need the UID to be the same in
> order to interact with other computers properly). But if the problem is
> deeper than user config files, this approach might not find it, especially
> if the new user ends up with the same username and uid as the old user.
>
> If you have any suggestions, I'd be happy to take this discussion to a
> more appropriate list, but I wouldn't know where just yet.
>
> Thanks again for your help. It would mean a lot for me to get this fixed.
I've come in late on this and so this may be ground you've already
covered.
Are there any lines in /var/log/XFree86.0.log that start (EE)?
Have you tried installing xdm and using that as your default display
manager?
Regards
Clive
--
www.clivemenzies.co.uk ...
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