Re: Preupgrade results in inability to start x

[Patrick Boutilier]

On 11/16/2011 01:14 PM, Claude Jones wrote:
>  On 11/16/2011 11:40 AM, Patrick Boutilier wrote:
> >> On 11/16/2011 11:29 AM, Claude Jones wrote:
> >>> I'm not sure where to go with this. I had one machine preupgrade quite
> >>> nicely. This one is failing to start X. I can get to a prompt and I've
> >>> tried running yum update, which brought in a few new packages, but I
> >>> still can't get a desktop. I'm using the nouveau driver and looking
> >>> through the Xorg.0.log file doesn't yield much. The last video reference
> >>> I can spot in the log says:
> >>>
> >>> AIGLX: Suspending AIGLX clients for VT switch
> >>> Nouveau(0): NVLeaveVT is called
> >>>
> >>> Googling on that second line brought up some posts about switching to
> >>> the VESA driver, but, I don't have an xorg.conf file, and I can't
> >>> generate one because system-config-display is not present on this
> >>> system...
> >>>
> >>> Can any one suggest something?
> >>
> >> Additional detail: The 'acorn' thingy appears during boot, and at the
> >> end of the process, the little rotating circle appears momentarily
> >> appears followed by the splash screen, then, after another moment, the
> >> splash screen goes away and a little computer icon appears in the middle
> >> of the screen with some text that says, "Oh no, something has gone
> >> wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Contact your
> >> administrator"....
> >>
> >
> > I have seen something like that when the system tried to login to Gnome
> > which wasn't installed. Does the kdm/gdm login prompt come up?
> >
> > Also, can you ctrl-Alt-F2 to get a console prompt? If so login and type
> > startx to see what happens.
>
>  the login prompt never comes up - I can't remember if I had gnome fully
>  installed on this machine, though I probably did, as I usually do
>
>  I do get a prompt on Ctl-Alt-F2 and have tried to start X as both me
>  (user), and as root, and it fails both ways - from root, I get this:
>
>  xauth: file /root/.serverauth.1984 does not exist
>  Fatal server error:
>  Server is already active for display 0
>  If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.xo-lock and start again
>
>  Removing that file has no effect
>  

Can you tell if you are running kdm or gdm?

ps ax|grep kdm

ps ax|grep gdm