Re: Upgrade to Sarge kills X

[cr <cr@orcon.net.nz>]

On Fri, 07 May 2004 01:45, Kent West wrote:
> cr wrote:
> >Well, I still haven't been able to make my Sarge-upgraded-from-Woody
> > system start X successfully.    (I'm using a text login and 'startx' to
> > try and start X).   I briefly get the grey dotted screen with the 'X' on
> > it, then it drops out again.
>
> Ah. X is starting, but it's not finding any clients to run, so it
> immediately exits. Try creating the file ".xinitrc" in your home
> directory with the single line:
>  icewm
> (assuming you have icewm installed; this line could be "startkde", or
> "gnome-session" or "fluxbox", or "wmaker", or etc etc etc).

Tried that.    No result.

Curiously enough, my (working) Woody setup has no .xinitrc in it either.    
Doing a 'find' for it shows that my Fedora Core 1 and Vector 
installations have .xinitrc files.   Knoppix doesn't, and Woody doesn't.   

Next interesting thing - typing 'xinit' brings up a bare X window  (with no 
window manager).    
Typing 'gnome-session' in that window brings up an error message 
"libbonobo-2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

'startkde' brings up 'cannot find startkde...'
Copying /usr/bin/startkde from Woody, I then get
'/usr/bin/kde2: No such file or directory'
Copying kde2 from Woody, I then get a list of a lot more files not found

However, 'afterstep' - works!    Rather badly, I might add, since I've never 
configured it, but I can manage to get a menu and load e.g. gedit, and open a 
text file in gedit.   

So my conclusion is, the problem isn't in  X itself, or the video drivers 
(which is what I was suspecting), but in the window managers, which have 
somehow got broken in the upgrade.   

I'll fiddle around with them and see if I can fix it.

So you're right about the symptoms, X is starting, but it can't find any 
clients _that work_  to run.

Thanks

cr