Re: X Windows (woody) and M68K problem
On Mon, Oct 28, 2002 at 12:51:31AM +0000, Steve Hargreaves wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> OK - I'm not sure if this is an M68k problem or a generic problem, but since it
> relates to my display, I thought I'd try here first.
>
> As some of you will know, I've had some real problems getting linux installed at
> all, but after successfully cludging a hybrid Potato with the 3.0 kernal
> install, I decided to let apt loose and used dselect to upgrade everything (174
> meg download over a dial up connection, which took a day and a half, so I'm
> hoping to fix things rather than go back to Potato).
>
> Anyway, xdm starts on booting linux, and was working fine (apart from a small
> problem) using the 2.2 CDs. Since upgrading, however, as soon as X Windows
> starts, the screen mode causes my monitor to loose sync, and it automatically
> goes into standby mode, meaning I can't see anything. I've tried the
> Ctrl-Alt-F1 keyboard combination to get back to the console (which is OK)
> hoping to get some control back, but nothing happens. This particular 3 finger
> salute has only worked sporadically anyway, so I can't even be sure it's
> switching.
>
> Using 2.2, I was using FBDev to manage the display. I assume somethin has
> changed in either XF86Config, or fb.modes. I have both of the working configs
> backed up, but since I can't see what's going on, I can't even attempt to
> restore backups.
>
> What I really need is to be able to disable xdm at startup (similar to booting
> without startup-sequence on the Amiga) but I don't know how.
>
> To make matters worse, some of the update failed owing to a lack of disk space
> :o( I've freed some up so will be able to finish the update, when I can get
> back into linux.
>
> Any ideas, anyone? My hardware config is as per my sig.
There might be some magic boot argument or such, but here's one way
I know:
Use your install disk to boot the installer. Switch to console 2,
or spawn a shell. Mount the root partition, for the sake of illustration:
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
Then cd /mnt/etc/rc2.d and ls. You should see something like S20xdm
among the files. Just rename it, I would use
mv S20xdm NotS20xdm
Then quit the installer and reboot, xdm will be prevented from starting up.
After you finish troubleshooting X's problems using startx manually, you
can re-enable the automatic startup if you want by naming the file back
to its original name.
It's going to be difficult to troubleshoot X if Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
doesn't force it to quit. You would need to have another machine ssh'd
in to regain control, or live with the resulting filesystem damage
when you shut it down. Or maybe you used ext3? If not, you can convert
ext2 to ext3 with tune2fs -j /dev/xxx - this is highly recommended if
you're going to have to power off the machine without shutting
down. If I were you, that's the first thing I would do when you get
back in.
Also for X, dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 may help.
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