How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

arch_nemesis · 2008-12-30 14:53:13

I booted this morning only to get this: The greeter application appears to be crashing.

I don't seem to know how to kill X or otherwise to get to a terminal to try the advice here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gno … .27t_start

If I CTRL-ALT-Fx to try and get a different terminal I get a black screen.

If I CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE before I try to CTRL-ALT-Fx, it restarts X, but goes back to the same error. If I try it after I CTRL-ALT-Fx it doesn't do anything.

I tried following the directions here regarding adding init=3 at the grub menu: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 04#p448704 to boot to init3, but I must be doing something wrong because it had no effect.

Help!

Last edited by arch_nemesis (2008-12-30 14:56:06)

Mr Green · 2008-12-30 14:57:31

Get yourself a livecd mount your root partition and edit /etc/rc.conf [remove gdm from daemons!] umount partition then on restart you should end up at console login

From there you can startx to try to figure out xorg problem

Wintervenom · 2008-12-30 15:51:32

Even easier: start in single user mode.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2008-12-30 15:52:21)

arch_nemesis · 2008-12-30 16:07:54

^^ Thanks Mr. Green, I shoulda thought of that!

Wintervenom: For future reference, how would I do that?

So, I was able to get in and disable gdm.

I did chmod 1777 /tmp as per the wiki, but no luck.

Then I catted the gdm log.

It complained about module "type1" not being found. A bit of googling showed that this was being loaded in xorg.conf, and that it is a deprecated font-related module. Based on advice in another forum, I commented it out. Not surprisingly this stopped that error from popping up, but GDM still won't load.

There are no longer any errors in the GDM log.

There are also no errors in the xorg log.

Just for fun I tried nvidia-xconfig. No issues there, but it didn't solve my problem.

So I'm scratching my head to try and recall what changed since my previous successful boot. The list is short:

I installed bin32-wine, which of course brought with it a long list of 32 bit libs. I haven't done anything with it yet except install it.

I also tried to install UT2004 using its native linux installer. The installer failed with a libgl error which I am sorry to say I did not capture. I was going to try the whole thing again today to try and capture the error for posting here. I answered "yes" and allowed it to use the path it suggested when it asked about installing symlinks to a directory in my path, the rest was automated and I would have thought it would be safe to run.

That's it!

Would reinstalling GDM be a stupid thing to try? And if I should try it, should I do pacman -Rsn gdm first?

Thanks!

Mr Green · 2008-12-30 16:21:47

you should be able to run startx from console and should give you some errors if X does not start

arch_nemesis · 2008-12-30 16:25:05

startx gives me what I guess must be a basic xwindows session? I've got a crappy little clock, and 2 xterm windows.

I'm guessing this means the problem is not with X -- but I'm reluctant to try reinstalling GDM. How likely is that to make things worse?

Mr Green · 2008-12-30 16:32:11

Well X is working .... maybe try slim or load up gdm and run it from console /etc/rc.d/gdm start see what happens

arch_nemesis · 2008-12-30 16:40:17

/etc/rc.d/gdm start gives me the same result as just typing "gdm" or as when I had it loading as a daemon...

I don't know what I read that made me think to try this, but I tried to run gnome-session. This gives me:

"locale not supported by C library, using the fallback 'C' locale.

which is followed by:

"Warning **: Cannot open display:"

Here's a thread about setting the locale to fix that error. I'm having a hard time struggling against 20 ton "OK, but if that fixes it *why* did this happen?" monkey that is riding my back, but setting that aside for the moment, is there any reason not to try the instructions in this post?

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 71#p458971

I did do nano /etc/locale.gen, and *nothing* is uncommented.

Last edited by arch_nemesis (2008-12-30 16:41:07)

arch_nemesis · 2008-12-30 16:59:34

I installed slim, and it gets me to a login screen, but when I log in it just returns me to that same login screen...

bgc1954 · 2008-12-30 17:20:07

Slim works a little differently than gdm as you need to create a .xinitrc to start your wm, de environment. See: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SLIM

X/ax · 2008-12-30 17:21:17

When you see grub, you hit the 'e' button (edit), edit the kernel line, and add '3' at the end. This will run the kernel in init 3, and thus not in X...

Mr Green · 2008-12-30 17:42:21

sort out your locales first then try again

arch_nemesis · 2008-12-30 19:10:25

Following the locales info in the wiki didn't change anything...

I did create .xinitrc in root's home directory though, and now slim gets me to a normal gnome session when I login as root. (Woohoo!) Thanks all for getting me to this point.

However, when I edit my own .xinitrc as well (to allow it to start gnome-session) things get a bit strange --

For reference, I have the fusion icon (which then starts compiz-fusion for me), conky, and cairo-dock running at startup, set via the "sessions" dialogue in GNOME. It's been this way for most of the time I've had Arch installed (which, granted, is only a couple of weeks) with no trouble.

Logging in via slim, I have no desktop wallpaper, and my upper gnome panel (the only gnome panel I was running) is gone. Conky runs, and (to my surprise) so does cairo-dock.

As a quick check, I tried to run a couple of things from cairo-dock -- gedit and gimp come up fine, but firefox does not. Though metacity seems to be providing my window decorations, I have some desktop effects working (like magic lamp when I close a window).

I know this thread has wandered a bit, but I hate to start a new one at this point -- any ideas?

(and if I haven't said it enough all ready *thanks* for all the help everyone!!!)

And also, I'm sure I've implied this but in case it wasn't clear -- my system was functioning perfectly as of when I booted it yesterday evening, and seemed fine when I shut it down. Only since trying to boot this morning have I had any issues.

Edit: That's cairo-dock!

Last edited by arch_nemesis (2008-12-30 19:20:23)

arch_nemesis · 2008-12-30 19:42:13

^^ To add to the above --

Since I'd never logged into gnome using root before, I got to wondering whether this is why root's desktop is a nice default gnome desktop while my normal user's profile clearly has some problems. So, thinking that one path forward might be to make myself a new user and copy all my media files and such over from my old home directory, I created a new user and then made an .xinitrc for it.

To my surprise, that user gets a desktop with no panels and no functionality, but wallpaper that matches the default slim background image. CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE gets me back to slim where I can again log in as root, to a nice functioning gnome environment...

arch_nemesis · 2008-12-30 20:45:02

As satisfying as it might be to figure this out, I'm just going to do a reinstall at this point....

Thanks, this was an educational thread nonetheless.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-12-30 14:53:13

How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#2 2008-12-30 14:57:31

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#3 2008-12-30 15:51:32

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#4 2008-12-30 16:07:54

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#5 2008-12-30 16:21:47

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#6 2008-12-30 16:25:05

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#7 2008-12-30 16:32:11

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#8 2008-12-30 16:40:17

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#9 2008-12-30 16:59:34

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#10 2008-12-30 17:20:07

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#11 2008-12-30 17:21:17

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#12 2008-12-30 17:42:21

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#13 2008-12-30 19:10:25

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#14 2008-12-30 19:42:13

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

#15 2008-12-30 20:45:02

Re: How to prevent xorg/gdm from starting at boot for troubleshooting?

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