How to purge and reinstall XFree86 [woody] ?

[Brian Boonstra <boonstb@cmg.FCNBD.COM>]

Ouch

	I've gotten myself into a real dill of a pickle.  I run woody, but  
around Thanksgiving I hadn't upgraded for weeks.  I did "apt-get upgrade"  
which screwed up KDE and X.  After "apt-get dist-upgrade", uninstalling and  
reinstalling KDE (from 1.x to 2.x), and making a symlink from the X binary to  
xserver-3dlabs, I got things working.

	Or so I thought.

	Last night, I did another "apt-get upgrade" and X would no longer  
start.  I tried using "apt-get remove" on xserver-common, and whatever other  
xfree86 related packages I could find.  I made sure all the xfree86 version  
3.x stuff was gone.  Then I did "apt-get install" for the various version 4  
packages.

	Finally, I did xf86cfg, which is supposed to try to autodetect my  
hardware, then give me configuration options.  It did give me an X screen  
with a cursor, but it hung after that.  I rebooted, and now it just seems  
like it keeps trying to start the X server.  It shows the VGA text startup  
screen, blinks a minute, then goes back to that screen.

	I can't even log in on the console!!  I'm going to bring another  
machine home tonight so I can ssh in to try to fix this, but can anybody give  
me pointers as to what I need to do?

	I'm tempted to try the nuclear option -- back up the homedirs, dpkg  
--get-selections, wipe the disk, and start fresh.  But that's inelegant, and  
lots of work.  i would really appreciate other ideas.


		Thanks,

			Brian