This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: Steven Boswell <whatis@home.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 10:33:05 -0700
I've been running RedHat 6.2 for a few months now (and I've been running
Red Hat Linux in general for several years now). I've got it running on
three machines; two of them have X Windows installed.
But I can't get X Windows to work reliably in 6.2! (I don't remember
having ANYWHERE this much trouble with X Windows in previous Red Hat
releases.) When I start it, it looks like it's trying to start X
Windows, fails, and then loops back and tries to do it again. So it
just gets itself into a loop where it constantly fails, and there's no
way to stop it. Even worse, I can't switch to any other virtual
console, because it just switches back to the broken X Windows console.
Only if I Ctrl-Alt-Delete over and over quickly do I have a chance of
getting the machine back under my control.
The worst of it is, X Windows will work fine for a long time, then one
day I'll start up the machine & X Windows will be magically broken. I
don't know what the heck I'm doing to break it, but it's not like I'm
such a sloppy user that I'm just randomly trashing my system. X Windows
just seems FRAGILE.
My question is....when X Windows starts doing this, how the hell do we
debug it?
===
Subject: RE: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: Steven Lord <StevenL@yeovil-college.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 19:15:36 +0100
And your graphics card is...
And your X Server is...
And your Processor is...
It could be all sorts of things, remember the X server is only part of the
equation. Are you running X that comes with it? Have you tried the SVGA, or
the VGA (or even the MONO) X Server? What version of X11R6 are you running?
Are you stopping any services that you shouldn't be? I had a problem with my
internet connection using lock files that stopped apps spawning because of
the lock files. I also had a problem with DNS and the X server because I
wasn't running BIND at the time! There are lots of variables. Try removing
the .Xdefaults file. Change your window manager, try xinit instead of
startx. There are lots of different things to try. Try setting it up
according to the X howto's on www.linuxdoc.org
and then if all else fails, try changing the graphics card.
===
Subject: Re: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: Jag <agrajag@linuxpower.org>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 11:19:25 -0700
On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, Steven Boswell wrote:
> My question is....when X Windows starts doing this, how the hell do we
> debug it?
Switch your run level to 3. This way X won't start automatically. Log
in on the console, and 'startx' to see why X isn't starting correctly.
The behavior you gave is what happens when you're in run level 5 and X
can't start correctly. As soon as it bombs out, init restarts it and
you have a continual cycle like you described.
===
Subject: Re: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: Wesley Griffin <wgriffin@Glue.umd.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 15:02:38 -0400
* Steven Boswell <whatis@home.com> [06/20/00 14:00]:
> My question is....when X Windows starts doing this, how the hell do we
> debug it?
look at the :0.log file in /var/gdm
I've had this happen on 3 different boxes over the last 2-3 weeks.
they're development machines, so they get rebooted constantly, and gdm
wasn't necessary, so I just disabled it. If you're having the same
problem I was having, :0.log should show a bunch of xauth errors. the
server is being started, but nothing seems to have authority to
connect, including gdm.
I don't have time right now to try and fix it, so I just set the
default run level to 3, but if anybody figures this out, please post to
the list, I wouldn't mind having gdm running again.
===
Subject: Re: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: "Eric H. Majzoub" <ehm@howdy.wustl.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 14:13:48 -0500 (CDT)
On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, Steven Boswell wrote:
> releases.) When I start it, it looks like it's trying to start X
> Windows, fails, and then loops back and tries to do it again. So it
> just gets itself into a loop where it constantly fails, and there's no
> way to stop it. Even worse, I can't switch to any other virtual
> console, because it just switches back to the broken X Windows console.
> Only if I Ctrl-Alt-Delete over and over quickly do I have a chance of
> getting the machine back under my control.
>
This has happened to me. My feeling is that it's an xfs / xdm problem.
Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what I did (this was a while back),
but I was playing with xfs and it went away. I do remember the fonts
being different on parts of the login screen when I finally got it to
work. As far as I know, part of the login screen needs xfs served fonts.
Is this correct/incorrect?? Someone probably knows better than me.
===
Subject: Re: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: Matt Fahrner <Matt.Fahrner@coat.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 16:11:59 -0400
This can happen if you "su" to root using a user id that is separate
from root but uses the same home directory. For instance instead of
sharing root we give out individual root. For instance mine reads:
rootmf:x:0:0:Super Matt Fahrner:/home/matt:/bin/csh
If I "su" under certain circumstances it re-writes the ".Xauth*" files
as root then when I go to log in as myself I can't login into X without
hangs and stuff. Resolution, remove the ".Xauth*" files and restart your
X services.
===
Subject: Re: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: Steven Boswell <whatis@home.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 13:15:19 -0700
> > My question is....when X Windows starts doing this, how the hell do we
> > debug it?
>
> look at the :0.log file in /var/gdm
THANK YOU! It was complaining about not being able to connect to some
socket. I found the socket in /tmp; it looked like an old copy. I
removed all the old X-related stuff from /tmp (e.g. .X11-Unix,
.ICE-Unix, .font-unix, and a few others), and now X Windows will start
correctly.
One note I wanted to add, though....X Windows was dying/starting in a
loop even though I've removed it from /etc/inittab -- just typing "gdm"
all by itself on a root console was enough to start the loop.
===
Subject: Re: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: "Andrew E. Mileski" <andrewm@netwinder.org>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 16:33:15 -0400
Steven Boswell wrote:
> THANK YOU! It was complaining about not being able to connect to some
> socket. I found the socket in /tmp; it looked like an old copy. I
> removed all the old X-related stuff from /tmp (e.g. .X11-Unix,
> .ICE-Unix, .font-unix, and a few others), and now X Windows will start
> correctly.
Check if you are running the font server (xfs).
If yes: make sure your XF86Config file has a fontpath entry for it
FontPath: "unix/:-1"
If no: comment out the fontpath entry for the server
# FontPath: "unix/:-1"
Use startx not gdm. Use "telinit 5" when you want to use gdm,
and "telinit 3" to turn it off (assuming the entry is in your
inittab).
===
Subject: Re: X Windows in 6.2 is VERY fragile!
From: Chris Pinnock <C.J.E.Pinnock@qmw.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 23:54:43 +0100
On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 10:33:05AM -0700, Steven Boswell wrote:
> But I can't get X Windows to work reliably in 6.2! (I don't remember
> having ANYWHERE this much trouble with X Windows in previous Red Hat
> releases.) When I start it, it looks like it's trying to start X
> Windows, fails, and then loops back and tries to do it again. So it
> just gets itself into a loop where it constantly fails, and there's no
> way to stop it. Even worse, I can't switch to any other virtual
> console, because it just switches back to the broken X Windows console.
> Only if I Ctrl-Alt-Delete over and over quickly do I have a chance of
> getting the machine back under my control.
Hi,
I've had similar problems to this under Redhat 6.1 recently. In my case
it turned out that the X font server had died, and it seemed to be
impossible to restart it with /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs restart
because a subsystem had been locked in a certain way.
In this instance, a reboot fixed it (one can be cautious and bring
the machine up in a lower runlevel than 5 if one wants).
If you can get a console or a remote login to the machine, check
the status of xfs with /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs status
This might not be the problem in your case, but you never know...
===