Arch Linux

svenper

Member

Registered: 2015-04-15

Posts: 28

[SOLVED] Xorg unable to connect to programs

When launching startx and xmonad, the desktop shows up. Attempting to open dmenu or urxvt will do nothing. After exiting back to console, I get error messages like

urxvt: X connection to ':0' broken, unable to recover, exiting.

which indicates that I successfully launched urxvt, but it failed to display. So to me the issue seems to be xorg itself. I have not changed any configs around the time of the update.

/var/log/pacman.log shows notable recent upgrades such as:

fontconfig
gtk-update-icon-cache
xf86-video-intel (though I use an AMD APU so that may be irrelevant)

Output of pacman -Qs xorg | grep local/ for detailed package versions.

Output of cat ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log

$ pacman -Q linux && uname -a
linux 4.6.4-1
Linux thinkpad 4.6.4-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Jul 11 19:12:32 CEST 2016 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Last edited by svenper (2016-08-06 13:02:35)

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg unable to connect to programs

Please paste your Xorg log and the output of `pacman -Q linux && uname -a`.

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Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

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svenper

Member

Registered: 2015-04-15

Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg unable to connect to programs

OP updated with that info. By the "Xorg log" I assumed you meant ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg unable to connect to programs

I'm assuming that you used some sort of script to install Arch, and that is what accounts for all the different video drivers being installed.

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Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

svenper

Member

Registered: 2015-04-15

Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg unable to connect to programs

No, but I did install the full xorg group and archboot (which admittedly was a bit lazy), but neither of those caused problems before the update. I will remove as much as I can and report back if I make any progress.

Last edited by svenper (2016-08-06 11:12:26)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,534

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg unable to connect to programs

How do you attempt to open dmenu or urxvt?  What's in your xinitrc?

What's in your xmonad configs?  Do you have problems with other WMs?

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"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

svenper

Member

Registered: 2015-04-15

Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg unable to connect to programs

I found the issue: a couple of manually installed fonts in /usr/share/fonts. I don’t know if it was because of their large size (up to 70MB for a single file), them being CJK fonts, or because they came from a certain fruit branded computer, but once they were removed I was able to launch applications again.

The strange thing is that these fonts were also present before the upgrade. I specifically tested them to see if they worked, and they did.

Last edited by svenper (2016-08-06 13:05:37)

svenper

Member

Registered: 2015-04-15

Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Xorg unable to connect to programs

After some more digging, I think that this fontconfig commit is the source of the changed behavior. I’d investigate the code, but it goes over my head.