Re: Help... I think I've shot myself in the foot...
Peter S. Hayes wrote:
Hi all,
I've had Debian dual-booted with Win XP on my portable for about six
months. I haven't worked all the bugs out yet, but I've been getting
better! And I try using it for more of my personal work (my job
requires Windows at the moment).
Yesterday while at work, I was installing a package (R -
language/stats/graphing package) using dselect and, since there were
some required package upgrades, installed a couple of those also...
while working on my desktop (fool that I am) and being interrupted
occasionally with other people asking questions...
Somewhere - and I think this was in the configuration of a new xdm,
but I'm not sure - there was a screen explaining a setup of keyboards
and the choices I would be asked to choose from. This probably wasn't
a good time to do all of this, but hind sight is always 20/20. I
picked a "don't touch my keyboard" choice, thinking it would leave the
present arrangement (which was fine). Since rebooting this morning I
cannot log in at the X prompt. My mouse works fine, I have the X
Window login prompt (provided by xdm I think) but every key on my
keyboard does nothing except toggle the display window through three
size variations... I can do nothing but manually kill the power (with
all the corrupted files resulting).
Help... what, in my arrogant
getting-to-feel-pretty-comfortable-with-Linux stupidity, did I do to
myself?
I'm trying to work my way through the initialization files and the xdm
config, but I haven't had any luck so far...
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance...
Mournfully back in Windows...
Pete
If your machine is on the network and you have ssh installed, you can
ssh in and make repairs, thus avoiding the power-off scenario.
Does Ctrl-Alt-F1 get you to a console, or just toggle the display window
as you mention above? If it gets you to a console, does the keyboard
work properly there?
I'm not sure how to fix the keyboard mapping, but I'm responding in the
hope that these questions might spur a line of thinking that'll get you
further towards repair.
--
Kent
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