Preupgrade results in inability to start x

[Claude Jones]

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

-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD, USA