Need help with KDM/X11 guts... - Debian

This is a discussion on Need help with KDM/X11 guts... - Debian ; I've done a botched dist-upgrade of an old machine that was running Sarge before Sarge released. I forgot to change the apt source from "testing" to "sarge." I wound up with a mess, so I went ahead and changed it ...

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Thread: Need help with KDM/X11 guts...

  1. Need help with KDM/X11 guts...

    I've done a botched dist-upgrade of an old machine that was running Sarge
    before Sarge released. I forgot to change the apt source from "testing" to
    "sarge." I wound up with a mess, so I went ahead and changed it over to Sid
    and dist-upgraded it all again.

    I've spent the last six hours wrestling with KDM (and GDM and XDM) and I'm
    stumped. I've uninstalled, purged, and reinstalled hundreds of packages
    (everything related to X11 and KDE), I've tailed logs, I've compared files on
    a different (working just fine) Sid box, I even seriously contemplated taking
    a sledge hammer to the machine to see if I could discover anything that way.

    Nada. Rien.

    So here's the problem. KDM is up. I log in as somebody, pick any session
    type, but let's just use KDE here, so I log in with a KDE session, KDM bows
    out and passes control over to something. I'm not sure what that something
    is, internally. That something causes a stream of happy looking X11 is doing
    good things messages to appear in the logs (X.org.0.log probably, but I'm
    watching so many logs I'm starting to lose track of which window is what.)
    Then, nothing. Poof. Back to KDM.

    Something is breaking after the happy X11 messages, and I can't figure out WTF
    it is. Reinstalling umpteen packages didn't fix it (including running dpkg
    -i --force-confmiss on every .deb in the cache), but maybe I can fix it by
    hand once I know what I'm supposed to tinker with.

    (If I log in at the console and do an xinit /usr/bin/startkde then I can run
    KDE just fine, incidentally. Problem is my users will never tolerate
    anything that "complicated," so I have to spend all this time trying to save
    them from having to type a little bit.)

    As an added side benefit, I've also somehow attained a glorious state where
    the ctrl-alt-F? keys no longer switch between virtual terminals. I'm having
    to do all this monitoring from another box, because KDM is effectively
    rendering this machine useless from its own console (as a consequence of
    whatever deeper X problem is breaking KDM, obviously.)

    I realize this is only barely on-topic here, but I think it *is* barely
    on-topic here. If you beg to differ, I'll take it to whatever other Debian
    list you suggest. This is the only one I'm subscribed to at the moment.

    In the meantime, maybe if I get the source to KDM I can figure out what the
    devil this "something" control is getting handed off to is.

    Tomorrow. Gack. What a day.

    --
    Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
    Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
    http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
    http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/


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  2. Re: Need help with KDM/X11 guts...

    Hello Michael,

    What you describe might be caused by a problem with your
    /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc or by your user's .bash_profile. Try to create a new
    "generic" user and see if KDM lets you log on then. If that works you
    can comment out things in your normal .bash_profile until you find the
    command which causes the problem.

    See /usr/share/doc/kdm/NEWS.Debian.gz for more details.

    The fact that your system locks up and blocks the ctrl-alt-F? console
    switching, on the other end, might point to a problem with your video
    driver. There are known cases where Xorg seems to start normally at
    first and it displays the KDM login dialog just fine, but then it will
    crash with 100% certainty when trying to display the KDE splash screen.
    (example: the newer nvidia drivers with the RenderAccel option enabled)
    I don't know how likely that is, considering that you can start KDE
    manually without problems, but maybe you can try a very basic Xorg
    driver with all fancy options disabled.

    I hope this helps.

    Regards,
    Florian


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  3. Re: Need help with KDM/X11 guts...

    > So here's the problem. KDM is up. I log in as somebody, pick any session
    > type, but let's just use KDE here, so I log in with a KDE session, KDM
    > bows
    > out and passes control over to something. I'm not sure what that
    > something
    > is, internally. That something causes a stream of happy looking X11 is
    > doing good things messages to appear in the logs (X.org.0.log probably,
    > but I'm watching so many logs I'm starting to lose track of which window
    > is what.)
    > Then, nothing. Poof. Back to KDM.

    ~user/.xsession-errors may give you a hint.


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  4. Re: Need help with KDM/X11 guts...

    On Sunday 30 October 2005 08:16 am, Nikita V. Youshchenko wrote:
    > > So here's the problem. KDM is up. I log in as somebody, pick any
    > > session type, but let's just use KDE here, so I log in with a KDE
    > > session, KDM bows
    > > out and passes control over to something. I'm not sure what that
    > > something
    > > is, internally. That something causes a stream of happy looking X11 is
    > > doing good things messages to appear in the logs (X.org.0.log probably,
    > > but I'm watching so many logs I'm starting to lose track of which window
    > > is what.)
    > > Then, nothing. Poof. Back to KDM.
    >
    > ~user/.xsession-errors may give you a hint.

    Urf. I was stuck thinking globally, not locally:

    Xsession: X session started for [user] at Sun Oct 30 02:35:33 EST 2005
    ls: /etc/X11/Xsession.d: Permission denied

    Thanks so much for showing me the nose in front of my face! The directory had
    700 permissions for some reason. I can't believe I missed this for six
    hours.

    OK, that solved it. Wonderful. Thanks again!

    --
    Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
    Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
    http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
    http://rosegarden.sourceforge.net/tutorial/


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