[cooker-amd64] Re: X dont work after an update

[Duncan]

Philippe Makowski posted
<34305.213.41.130.125.1077924773.squirrel@secure.globenet.org>, excerpted
below,  on Sat, 28 Feb 2004 00:32:53 +0100:

> I made an update with Mandrake update and now the X server is flickering
> and don't want to start I understand nothing
> 
> here is XFree86.0.log

I'm taking that "I understand nothing" to mean the following won't be 
rehash for you... Apologies if so..

Well, there's no errors reported, making it a bit more difficult.
I see it's loading the free nv driver and detecting an NVidia chipset. 
Had you run the closed source NVidia driver before? If so, it often has
issues loading after kernel or sometimes XFree updates until you update it
as well.  However, it appears it's loading the NV driver which shouldn't
have the same issues.

Do you remember what items updated with Mandrake update?  Did you perhaps
try an entire reboot after the update to see if there was still something
incompatible loaded that a reboot fixes by loading the new version? 
(Someone knowing their way around could potentially avoid a reboot by
unloading the problem directly and loading the new one, but for those
without that sort of knowledge or experience, a reboot is often far
simpler.)

It's not absolutely clear from your post what exactly is failing to load. 
Sometimes X itself will load, thus, your log file without errors, but the
window manager, graphical login (kdm/xdm/gdm, etc.) if you are using one,
and general graphical environment (KDE, Gnome, etc.) if you aren't using
?dm, fail to load.  If X itself is failing to load, it will likely
repeatedly attempt to load and then return to a console with an error
from init saying it's respawning to fast, and has been killed for 5
minutes (to enable you to fix the problem).  Is that the flickering you
mention?  If so, the lack of mention of the respawning error has me
confused.  If X is loading but the graphical environment or login isn't,
that's a bit of a different issue, tho it would explain the lack of error
in the X log and may still be X or video driver related.

I also see video for linux (v4l) loading.  If it's a problem there, I
can't help as I know nothing about v4l and have never run it.  It could be
a problem with the driver for your particular hardware driver loading,
however.

Also, a question based on the above.. how do you load or invoke X?  If you
are using the default init level 5 ?dm with graphical login, what happens
if you use init level 3 and a console, login there, and run X or KDE or
whatever from there?  Sometimes one method will work but the other won't. 
This is has been fairly common during the cooker development process in my
experience, even back on i586.  Generally, it's the dm graphical login
that breaks, but init level 3, console mode, works, and one can start X or
whatever X graphical environment from there.  In fact, that's now my
preferred method, so I have boot to level three enabled by default, and
don't use the dm or level five at all, but rather, log in at the console
and start KDE (my preferred graphical environment) from there.  Anyway, if
it's failing one way, try the other.

Of course, that assumes you know how to go to init level three rather than
five, how to configure that for the default, and how to start KDE or
whatever from there.  For brevity I'm making that assumption, but if you
need a bit more step-by-step, just "holler", and I'll attempt to explain.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin