Re: display manager fails to start at login

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

Christoph Groth wrote:

> Hello fellow Debian users,
>
> A week ago I got a used Hercules 3d Prophet 4500 graphics board from a
> friend as a replacement for my good old Matrox Millennium II.
> Unfortunately, only closed-source drivers are available for the new
> card.  (I wouldn't buy such a card, but this is a different
> situation).
>
> I've installed the driver on my woody system and X works including
> hardware 3d acceleration.  However there is one problem: When my
> system starts kdm (gdm, xdm), the xserver crashes with signal 11,
> these are it's last words (from /var/log/XFree86.0.log
>
> ****************************************************************
> (II) LoadModule: "libPVR2D"
> (II) Loading /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/libPVR2D.so
>
> Fatal server error:
> Caught signal 11.  Server aborting
> ****************************************************************
>
> Now when I log in as root and run
>
> /etc/init.d/kdm start
>
> everything works perfectly!  There is no difference in the X-logfile
> except for the above error message.
>
> What is the difference between calling /etc/init.d/kdm directly and at
> login?  Can you think of a hack to make it working?  I know that
> supporting buggy closed-source drivers is not your business but
> perhaps someone has an idea.
>
> thanks in advance,
>
> Christoph
>  
The only thing I can think of is that something's not quite finished 
loading in the background before kdm tries to start during the boot 
process. When you manually run it, that "whatever" has finished loading. 
It's a shot in the dark.

A couple of things you might try; copy the kdm start script in 
/etc/rc2.d to the same name, but with one number higher. This way it'll 
run twice, but by the system instead of by you running it the second 
time manually. Might provide a clue.

Put a script just before the kdm script that delays for a minute or two; 
this might provide a clue if it's time-related like I first mentioned above.

Maybe provide more of the log file.

Sorry for these lame suggestions; it's a weird problem, and I'm just 
grasping.

--
Kent