Re: trapped in an xdm loop?

[Phillip Rulon <pjr@gnu.org>]

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   Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 14:34:26 -0500 (EST)
   From: Brian Servis <servis@purdue.edu>
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   *- On  4 Dec, Nancy this-address-is-valid McGough wrote about "trapped in an xdm loop?"
   > I'm in the process of setting up an old 486 with Debian Linux
   > (slink) and I seemed to be trapped in X Windows. When I type
   > Ctrl+Alt+Backspace it just restarts xdm with the login and
   > Password prompt. Typing a login and password doesn't help because
   > I get a blank blue screen and the mouse doesn't work. Pressing
   > Ctrl+Alt+Backspace at this point also throws me back into the xdm
   > login/Password prompt. I tried restarting the system and it boots
   > into this login/Password prompt. I tried typing Ctrl+C while it
   > was listing all the things it was doing and could not stop it
   > from running xdm. I tried booting from the boot floppy I made and
   > it said "boot failed". I can boot off the Rescue floppy but I
   > don't know what to type at the prompt to get to a point where I
   > can edit my config files so it won't start xdm at boot. FYI, this
   > happened when I was trying to get my mouse to work and I saw an
   > archived message from this list that said try "xdm stop" so I
   > tried that and now I'm in this loop.
   > 

   Ctr+Alt+F1 will take you to the first virtual console.  Login as root
   and issue the command '/etc/init.d/xdm stop'.  This will stop xdm until
   you reboot or restart it.  If you don't ever want xdm to start just
   remove it, 'dpkg --remove xdm'. 

I suspect that something is wrong with your .xsession file.  If it cannot 
launch a window manager or other program it will die and revert to xdm.
Look for lines that begin with exec.

pjr