On Tue, Dec 12, 2006 at 11:54:24AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 10:27:29AM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 08:57:03AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 07:38:37PM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > > > > > > > why don't you boot sarge, chroot into etch and install a kernel from > > > > inside the chroot? I think udev wants a kernel >= 2.6.15, IIRC. > > > > > > Actually, it turns out that aptitude *&had* managed to install the new > > > kernel -- it just hadn't put it into the boot menu -- a probelm easily > > > fixed from the sarge system. > > > > great! > > > > > > > > I now have an etch with networking, which I can use aptitude on, but > > > whose X doesn't come up properly. startx brings me to the black screen > > > of death, xdm permits me to enter username and password, blanks the > > > screen as if it is doing something, and then returns to its login > > > screen. gdm doesn't even get to login -- it just gives the black screen > > > of death. > > > > > > I looks as if I will have to investigate another day -- my regular users > > > are showing up. > > > > one step at a time eh? of course you nkow the drill, post the X logs. > > > > good luck > > I made no changes since my remarks quoted above. But when I booted this > morning, X did come up, XDM gave me a login window, and it allowed me > to log in and have access to my usual home directory. But it did give > me gnome instead of icewm (which was my default under gdm).
well, that's weird. > > So I now know that X works, that it recognises the screen, the keyboard, > the mouse, and so forth. cool. > > When I switched to the text-mode console using ctl-alt-F1, it gave me > that, and it worked properly too. > > But all was not well. When I switched back (using ctl-alt-F7) it gave > me a scrambled screen -- lots of horizontal streaks. The various > window decorations were present, but in multiple copies, and each > mostly obscured by the horizontal bars. Evidently the screen size in > its frame buffer did not match the screen size it was using. sounds like a driver issue for sure. > > I could ctl-alt-F1 back to the text cosole, which worked, and kill a > carefully chosen process, and return to the X screen to be greeted by > another login window, which worked too. > hmmm.... which process did you kill? also, try killing xdm and then using startx and see if that gives you the same problems above when switching consoles. > sing gdm instead of xdm still gives the black screen of death instead of > a login window. weird that gdm fails and xdm doesn't. Have you gone down the road of purging all of X and reinstalling it? > > Also -- is it suspicious that there were no package updates in etch this > morning? nope. I haven't check my cron-apt output today for my one etch machine, but that doesn't surprise me. I think with etch freeziong, you will only see bug fixes from now on which will probably make the updates minimal. A
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