Arch Linux

joafigue

Member

Registered: 2011-05-17

Posts: 3

Gnome3 and KDE4.6 freezes the computer and refuses to start

HI everyone:
I'm new to arch but i have been using linux for a couple of years now. I decided to switch to arch due to a suggestion from a friend and decided to install it in my desktop computer which is a fairly old pc (2004 hardware) , so I did a fresh install from scratch without touching the old partition table that I had in my computer and eventually finished the installing with no issues  worth of noting, then I did the system upgrade and installed the video driver for my computer

xf86-video-intel

given from

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 04)

Then i proceeded to install gnome3 using pacman, configured the .xinitrc , installed dbus and added the daemon to the /etc/rc.conf by the wiki suggestions and configured the KMS by editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst accordingly , however when i issued the startx command on the tty out of 5 times only 1 gnome actually started and before long it hanged out the computer giving me no option besides a hard reboot (actually every time the system simply had to be restarted the hard way)

At first I guessed that the problem was in dbus so I disabled it, but it gave no good result as gnome didn't start, but it returned to the terminal, so I disabled de intel video driver to allow gnome to start but it fell back to the fallback configuration giving a usable system but with obvious limitations and no access to  any of the tty so it was clearly no  solution at all.

Eventually I grew tired of trying with gnome so i decided to try KDE even though i knew it would require more effort from my hardware but it was basically the same problem.

Finally in a final impulse to avoid pulling all the hair from my head i decided to try XFCE which actually  run properly allowing me to use the system as i intended to do, yet I still don't understand what caused the hangs in my system  and i wanted to know if any of you have a suggestion for me (which might benefit other people)

BTW: During my struggle i reviewed the /var/log/xorg.0.log but it only gave me warnings and no error so i presume that it wouldn't get me any useful information (a hang out of the system of this magnitude shouldn't  be caused by a mere warning in the X server (otherwise the stability of linux wouldn't be so good))

I don't know if there is another info could be useful ( since if i knew probably i might be abe to solve the problem myself (maybe not but who knows))

PS: I apologize  if there are grammar issues in my post or is not clear enough as I'm not a native English speaker.

sand_man

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-06-10

Posts: 2,164

Re: Gnome3 and KDE4.6 freezes the computer and refuses to start

Could it be this bug? https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/23646

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joafigue

Member

Registered: 2011-05-17

Posts: 3

Re: Gnome3 and KDE4.6 freezes the computer and refuses to start

I'm not really sure if it's the same bug (how can I be sure of it ?). but from the description it looks a little different from my problem, since (as far as I've been able to test) my problem is restricted to gnome and KDE, and doesn't look like a XORG issue by itself as my arch installation which I'm running right now using XFCE DE has no issues so far with video driver and KMS fully configured.