X doesn't always start & corrup Xorg.0.log

spupy · 2009-08-15 20:04:34

Hi guys. This is another boring "Booo, X won't start" thread. With a twist.

X won't always start. It only manages to start 1 out of 4 times, approx. When it fails I just get the dreaded black screen. I have to note it is not the same black as the background on a tty, but the black I see when the screen is off. When this happens, I need to shutdown by holding the power button. I can't switch to a tty and ctrl-alt-backspace doesn't work (I forgot to enable it, I guess? I haven't tried if it works otherwise.)

Related to this post of mine. After X fails to start I naturally boot again to check Xorg.0.log before attempting again. But Xorg.0.log is corrupted. (Exactly how - you can read in the other post). It doesn't tell me anything. In case X manages to start, the log file is OK and shows no errors.

(I see the same black screen when I recover from suspend, but that might be a different issue.)

Video card is ATi Xpress 200M, using the radeon driver. (Btw, whoa Arch, i didn't know I can get direct rendering with the open source driver!! Yay! Ubuntu, debian & gentoo wouldn't let me do it )

Thanks for reading and double thanks for answering.

Last edited by spupy (2009-08-15 20:06:11)

AdrenalineJunky · 2009-08-15 20:08:43

you could try booting to consol and then starting via xinit/startx.

if it fails it should print out some information on what went wrong.

spupy · 2009-08-15 20:14:35

AdrenalineJunky wrote:

you could try booting to consol and then starting via xinit/startx.
if it fails it should print out some information on what went wrong.

I always boot to console. I don't use *DM. I then type startx and normally go into fluxbox. When it fails and shows the black screen, the computer is locked up and I can't do anything but restart. After restart after that black screen the Xorg.0.log is corrupted.

djszapi · 2009-08-15 20:33:26

Hello spupy!

Can you try it with older version driver ? Sometimes it was a fix for me.

rusty99 · 2009-08-15 21:33:26

You could try either of these to kill X when your screen blanks, add setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp if using a .xinitrc,.
Otherwise you'll need to look at Input Hotplugging and adding <merge key="input.xkb.options" type="string">terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp</merge> to /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-08-15 20:04:34

X doesn't always start & corrup Xorg.0.log

#2 2009-08-15 20:08:43

Re: X doesn't always start & corrup Xorg.0.log

#3 2009-08-15 20:14:35

Re: X doesn't always start & corrup Xorg.0.log

#4 2009-08-15 20:33:26

Re: X doesn't always start & corrup Xorg.0.log

#5 2009-08-15 21:33:26

Re: X doesn't always start & corrup Xorg.0.log

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