aptitude hosed X
Hello,
the current problem first: somehow I managed that X wouldn't start
anymore (long story below).
I spent the evening tracing and fixing several issues. There's no more
(EE)rrors left in the output, but X still doesn't work. One line says:
(II) Loading sub module "fb" -- does "fb" mean framebuffer?
When I originally set up X on my box, it wouldn't run until I ran
dpkg-reconfigure and turned off the framebuffer. It's still turned off,
and I can't see any mention of anything fb in XF86Config-4 -- so I don't
know how I could disable this and just see what happens.
The longer story:
Last afternoon I went to fetch a single package (mt-st) when aptitude
notified me that several packages were due for uninstall as nothing
depends on them anymore.
While I was a little astonished why this happened without me having
uninstalled any package recently, I nonetheless gladly took the offer.
As far as the package names made any sense to me at all, it was stuff I
never wanted.
Next thing I know, X becomes dead slow. I was able to leave gracefully,
but saving the open mail message in evolution took some minutes... all
attempts to fix and restart X have since failed.
Apparently at least one of the packages whose names told me nothing was
vital, and I should not have allowed removal.
Trying to fix things, I found some odds&ends regarding DRI, and xfs was
not installed. For all I know, both could have been the case for quite
some time: DRI is not necessary, and there were enough font paths to
work without xfs.
One thing still open is the configured/generic mouse -- debconf insists
on writing both devices to the config, although the "generic mouse" will
fail to work -- but it was like that even before the trouble started.
I'm writing this from a half-configured sarge install I did months ago;
I have evolution installed but not openoffice, and don't dare to update
this system for fear of wrecking it as well. Anything that will give me
my old system back will be great.
cu,
Schnobs
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