Re: X window system
john gennard wrote:
I have installed Potato 2.2r4 on a third box and am
having difficulty in getting X to work.The mobo and
cpu were running Potato on an upgraded box, and the
harddisk held Slink for a long time.Kernel is 2.2.19,
and xfree-common etc packages are v.3.3.6-11.
Normally, Debian gets X to go OK after I run
'xf86config'. This time it didn't and initially gave
problems with fonts about which I asked for and got
help. What happens now is:-
1. Booting is apparently normal but I get dumped into
a blank screen. Ctrl+Alt+Fx puts me into a console
and I can use the system normally except that during
the first two or three commandline instructions I
get the error message:-
'probable hardware bug:clock timer configuration
lost - probably a VIA686a.
restoring chip configuration'
If you custom compile a kernel, you might find some bug work-arounds for
various chipsets. This might solve this issue; might not.
2. If I then run 'startx', I'm told:-
'server is already active for display 0
Xlib - connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib - Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE etc
xinit - unable to connect etc, no such process
(errno3) etc'
I expect this for I understand that display is the
default, but which program sets it.
From your description at top of message, it sounds like X is running;
it's just producing a blank screen. Therefore you can't start X on the
same display. For kicks, you might try "startx -- :1" to start X on the
second display (Ctrl-Alt-F8 instead of Ctrl-Alt-F7 to switch to it if
you switch away from it with Alt-Fx). Alternatively, you can kill X ("ps
ax" and kill whatever X processes are running, or Ctrl-Alt-F7 to switch
back to the X display, followed by Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to ungracefully
"force quit" X). You probably also have some sort of session manager
running; you'll probably have to stop that also
("/etc/init.d/[x|d|w|k|g]dm stop"), or the "X logon screen" will just
start up again. Then "startx 2>startx.log" will start X manually and log
the error messages to the file "startx.log".
You might also try Ctrl-Alt-+ or Ctrl-Alt-- (the + and - keys on the
keypad) while in the original X (Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return to it) screen, to
switch "resolutions", which might give you a usable screen.
My suspicion is that something about the video setup is wrong in XF86Config.
Comparing 'printenv' with my other two boxes,
'DISPLAY=:0.0' and 'KDE_DISPLAY=:0.0' are missing
and my attempts to set these by hand fail - they
disappear on reboot.
X will try to use the first available display, which in this case will
default to :0.0. I'm 99.734% confident you don't need to worry about
this just for normal X use.
4. If I try to run 'XF86Setup', I fail - error:-
'X11TransSocketUNIXconnect - can't connect: error111.
presumably because X is still running. Kill it as mentioned above, then
try running XF86Setup.
I should have got to grips with X window system when
I first started, didn't do so and now find the docs
confuse me (most are not Debian specific).
Is the above sufficient to enable a diagnosis of the
problem to be made? Could someone give me a short
rundown on the basics as they relate to Debian.
I'd be very grateful for help. I have two other boxes
runnin 2.2.r4, but I cannot trace any files missing
which could account for my problem.
john.
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