Arch Linux

chaoticdefendant

Member

Registered: 2010-09-06

Posts: 6

[SOLVED] X failing to load

Hey all,

I've got a fresh install of Arch on my workstation after successfully installing it on my netbook, but it's refusing to cooperate nicely with X.
Even after a fresh install of X, starting X as root merely gets me a black screen, usually with red lines on it. It also seems to have all the tty screens transplanted onto tty7 (or the X11 screen), so that tty1, for example, won't have any output (just the flashing cursor) but it gets put onto the X11 screen instead.

Could somebody help out here? I'm using an Nvidia 9800GT. X should work by itself, I managed to get it working somehow before, it gave me a fresh twm desktop. However, after installing SLiM and running that (both with inittab and daemon), X gives me the screen above.

What's going on?

Last edited by chaoticdefendant (2010-09-13 11:23:34)

stefanwilkens

Member

From: Enschede, the Netherlands

Registered: 2008-12-10

Posts: 624

Re: [SOLVED] X failing to load

SLiM is wildly under-maintained, how are you launching it at the moment?
that nvidia card needs the "nvidia" module, do you have this installed?

if you disable slim and do the following:
cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc /home/username/

and then edit /home/username/.xinitrc to look like so:

#!/bin/sh
#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)
exec xterm
# exec startkde
# exec startxfce4
# ...or the Window Manager of your choice

and then start X using:

$ startx

do things then work properly?

---

Arch i686 on Phenom X4 | GTX760

chaoticdefendant

Member

Registered: 2010-09-06

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] X failing to load

yeah, thanks for the heads up!
I didn't have the nvidia and the nv drivers installed,
a quick look through the xorg logs confirmed this.

Quick pacman -Ss the required files, it's all working now.
Thank for that.