X doesn't start

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 22:34 +0000, Beartooth wrote:
> On Mon, 26 May 2008 17:18:13 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 18:18 +0000, Beartooth wrote:
> 
> >> 	pgrep -fl X as user just puts me back to my prompt. As root, it
> >> does the same.
> > 
> > That's what it's supposed to do. If it didn't give you any other
> > feedback, then you aren't running X.
> 
> 	OK, fine by me. 
> 
> >> 	Not knowing from console (I can't exactly open a gnome-terminal
> >> at the moment), I tried it as root from the one command line I have.
> > 
> > That's a console in Unix-speak.
> 
> 	I kinda had a sneakin' hunch it might be.
> 
> >> It
> >> hit a cupsd error, saying it lacked libldap-2.3.so.0, went on, and
> >> seemed to hang on starting anacron.
> >> 
> >> 	I killed it with ^C, did init 3 alone (which also seemed to hang
> >> on anacron) and did init 5.
> > 
> > It only appears to hang because most of the output is coming from
> > various other processes as they start or finish. If you hit Enter you
> > should get a Shell prompt.
> 
> 	Aha. I figured, from its completing the next time, that it must 
> be way slow. (It isn't usually.) But I didn't know about hitting enter.
> 
> >> 	That did more stuff, of course, still hit the cupsd error, and
> >> also set out to start anacron. This time I let it go, and went for a
> >> shower (about 1/2 hour). It got past anacron, saying OK; set network
> >> parameters, and started the NetworkManager daemon, calling both those
> >> OK -- and that's where it still is.
> > 
> > Did any of this happen on a graphical screen, or is it all on the same
> > white-on-black text console as before? In the normal boot sequence the
> > startup screen goes graphical (i.e. a few colours and a progress bar)
> > fairly early in the process.
> 
> 	All strictly white on black. I normally wait for the graphical 
> login.
> 
> >> > If it still doesn't work, check for errors (lines marked EE) in
> >> > /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
> >> 
> >> 	That found two. The first says "Unable to locate/open config
> >> file." The second gets more specific: "Failed to load module
> >> "pcidata"(module does not exist, 0)"
> > 
> > The first one if OK, it's just saying you don't have a config file,
> > which you know since you moved it. The second one may or may not be a
> > real problem but I'm afraid my X knowledge doesn't cover it except that
> > a non-existent module might imply an incomplete installation. My own
> > Xorg.0.log file has no reference to pcidata (I only have an onboard
> > Intel 965 chipset).
> 
> 	Meseems I've seen some such message among boot-ups somewhere 
> before, and had booting complete successfully into X ...
> 
> 	Incidentally, in case you haven't noticed, I've also been trying 
> things on this problem with Matthew Saltzman in the thread "Weirdness 
> with Fedora/XP upgrade." And I did manage to scp something very close to 
> all the files I wanted, from the troubled #1 machine into this #2 one, 
> while #1 was online. So I have a lifeline.
> 
> 	As I told him, I'll gladly keep this up so long as either of you, 
> or any other clearly knowledgeable person here thinks it worth while. 
> Hey, we might uncover the anaconda bug! 
> 
> 	But if the worse comes to the worst, I'm confident I can now live 
> with the results of wiping the hard drive and re-installing F8 from 
> scratch.

Sounds like a plan :-) I have the impression your installation is fairly
screwed up at the moment, so it may be time to cut your losses.

poc