>Ouch
>
> I've gotten myself into a real dill of a pickle. I run woody, but
>around Thanksgiving I hadn't upgraded for weeks. I did "apt-get upgrade"
>which screwed up KDE and X. After "apt-get dist-upgrade", uninstalling and
>reinstalling KDE (from 1.x to 2.x), and making a symlink from the X binary to
>xserver-3dlabs, I got things working.
>
> Or so I thought.
>
> Last night, I did another "apt-get upgrade" and X would no longer
>start. I tried using "apt-get remove" on xserver-common, and whatever other
>xfree86 related packages I could find. I made sure all the xfree86 version
>3.x stuff was gone. Then I did "apt-get install" for the various version 4
>packages.
"dpkg --purge xserver-svga" should clean out all the cobwebs.
> Finally, I did xf86cfg, which is supposed to try to autodetect my
>hardware, then give me configuration options. It did give me an X screen
>with a cursor, but it hung after that. I rebooted, and now it just seems
>like it keeps trying to start the X server. It shows the VGA text startup
>screen, blinks a minute, then goes back to that screen.
Try running "dexter". Rumor has it works much better than xf86cfg.
> I can't even log in on the console!! I'm going to bring another
>machine home tonight so I can ssh in to try to fix this, but can anybody give
>me pointers as to what I need to do?
I believe you can tell your computer which run-level to start with at the LILO
prompt (assuming you're using LILO). IIFC, simply typing 2 and enter, will start
you at run-level 2 (no X-Server running...plain ole console mode). Check some
documentation on this feature of LILO on the net as I could be incorrect. I know
you can do this (specify the run-level at boot time), but I forget how.
If this fails, ssh into your box and edit your /etc/inittab and set the
run-level from 5 to 2. This way, X won't start up upon booting the machine,
thus, making debugging much easier. Once you've got X running fine, you can
switch back to run-level 5 to use you display manager (xdm/gdm/kdm).
Scott
