problems starting X
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Hey all. I just had a problem crop up the other day, and it's got me
totally baffled. I'm running slink, with the updates from netgod.net, and
the 3dfx xserver from http://glide.xxedgexx.com/3DfxRPMS_vb_glibc.html
(converted to .deb via alien). I have a 3dfx voodoo3 2000 card. I had no
trouble getting X up and running with this setup, and it worked fine for
about a month. But the other day, I logged out of X and noticed that the
wdm login screen didn't come up. The screen was black, and I couldn't
switch to another VC. I logged in remotely in checked the log files, but
found nothing. kill (-TERM and -KILL) had no effect on the X server. So
I rebooted...
After quite a bit of experimentation, I discovered the following:
If /etc/X11/Xserver starts with:
/usr/bin/X11/XF86_SVGA (or _VGA16)
Console
then nobody can start X at all. The screen goes black, CTRL+ALT+(BS ||
DEL) has no effect. However, if /etc/X11/Xserver looks like:
/usr/bin/X11/XF86_SVGA (or _VGA16)
Anybody
^^^^^^^
Then non-root users have no problems starting X. But root has the same
problem as before. This problem shows up with both startx and wdm.
I have logged in remotely and run startx so I could see all the output,
but nothing interesting showed up at all. Based on the output, X thought
it was running. Ctrl+C caused startx to exit, and it sent signals to the
X server to kill it. It tried a SIGTERM, but that wasn't successful, so
it sent a SIGKILL, then exited. However, the X server didn't exit, and
the screen remained black.
Does anybody have any suggestions as to where to look to debug this
problem? I know it's not hardware related, because as I stated above,
non-root users can startx if the /etc/X11/Xserver file looks right. It
must be some kind of configuration thing, because XF86_SVGA (the 3dfx
copy) and XF86_VGA16 both fail...I didn't make any changes to
XF86Config.
TIA,
noah
PGP public key available at
http://lynx.dac.neu.edu/home/httpd/n/nmeyerha/mail.html
or by 'finger -l frodo@ccs.neu.edu'
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