I had a problem today thanks to the latest round of XFree86 upgrading in Sid. I logged out, and gdm failed to come up. I rebooted and it again failed. /var/log/syslog simply said that it had failed, but not why. /var/log/XFree86.0.log told me that the mouse could not be initialized, and hinted that my mouse configuration had changed. This was confirmed by looking at /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 -- my customizations were all gone.
I restored the previous version of the file, which had helpfully been preserved as XF86Config-4.dexconf-backup, and then all was well. The remaining issue is how to prevent this from happening again. I understand that the problem derives from the debconf database having different settings than what I had manually put into XF86Config-4. Okay, so I need to change debconf to agree with me. So I ran "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86", and fixed up most, but not all, of the differences. The mouse is now fine, at least. The remaining issue is that of font management; dexconf insists on inserting a line for an xfs listening on port 7100, which is wrong because I don't have an xfs installed. It also insists on throwing away the entry for my TrueType fonts directory. dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 didn't ask me about those things, and dpkg-reconfigure xfree86-common didn't ask me about anything. Is there some other package I can reconfigure that will ask me the right questions so I can prevent my X configuration from getting subtly screwed up every time a new set of XFree86 packages is installed? The TrueType fonts, by the way, didn't come from a Debian package, which I suppose could be why debconf doesn't know about them; I just copied them over from my Windows machine and manually configured them. If there's some trivial package I can install that will just register the presence of the font directory, I'll do that. I also have defoma installed, but the dfontmgr program is rather unintuitive. If this program can do what I need done, can someone tell me how to do it? Thanks, Craig
