X windows freezes on start

[Robin Laing]

Kam Leo wrote:
> On 8/20/07, Langdon Stevenson <langdon at lindenrow.com.au> wrote:
>> I decided to check if X works on my new server and ran into the
>> following problem:
>>
>> Server starts at run level 3 and operates fine.
>>
>> When I:
>>
>>    startx
>>
>> from the command line, X loads, then when it reaches the point where it
>> displays the splash screen for login, the splash screen flashes up for a
>> moment, with the cursor displaying as a hash of colour, then the screen
>> goes blank.
>>
>>
>> I can ssh into the machine from another workstation, so the machine
>> hasn't hung.  "top" reveals that the X process is now thrashing the CPU
>> away at 100%.  But no response from keyboard or monitor of the server
>> itself.
>>
>> Only way to bring it back is to do a shutdown via the ssh session.
>>
>> Can anyone suggest how I should go about debugging this issue?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Langdon
> 
> 1. Your chance of getting the proper advice greatly improves if you
> told us what video card and display is attached to your system.
> 
> 2. If you are using a recent model ATI or Nvidia graphics card enable
> the Livna repository grab and install the appropriate rpm.
> 
> 3. Run "system-config-display --reconfigure" to properly configure
> your video card and display.
> 

With the problem indicated, I think he is running the closed source 
binary driver.

I have this problem and spent last night trying to see if I can make any 
changes to get my machine to quit freezing.

I have an nvidia card and I tried the Livna driver first.  My machine 
would freeze at almost anything I did that pushed the video.  Frustration.

I put in the freshrpms driver with dkms and I never had a lockup, just 
screen issues.

I tried the Nvidia driver following their instructions and lockups were 
worse than the livna driver.

Putting the noapic apic=no in grub stopped the lockups.

In all cases the Xorg would climb to 98%+ but not crash.  Just made the 
machine unresponsive.  Only option was reboot or killing xorg from a ssh 
session.

I can get the nv driver to climb to over 80% but not make the machine 
un-responsive.

-- 
Due to the move to Exchange Server,
    anything that is a priority, please phone.
Robin Laing