Dear friends,
I have a problem that no X terminal will run. I have tried:
xterm, rxvt, nxterm. These all quit immediately without any descriptive
error messages. Gnome Terminal runs but it does nothing: does not accept
any keyboard input and does not display a cursor. I am not having any
problems with other X Windows applications, only with terminals so far.
Text editors and other apps that get keyboard input work fine.
I suspect that the problem is related to the following error message from
xkbcomp. After the startx script runs, it leaves the following message:
>"XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
>Error: Cannot open "compiled/server-0.xkm" to write keyboard description.
>Exiting
>Couldn't load XKB keymap, falling back to pre-XKB keymap
-- MY SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
RedHat Linux 6.0; with several updates installed (see below)
XFree86-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm; and several other XFree86 updates
kernel version: 2.2.5-15
-- MY HARDWARE
Toshiba Satellite Pro 400CS laptop
Pentium CPU; 66MHz
Chips & Technologies CT65546 chipset
40 MB RAM
Lots O' Hard Disk Space...
-- HISTORY OF THE PROBLEM
I upgraded to RedHat 6.0 from a previous installation (RH 4.3 I think).
I didn't have this problem immediately after installing RedHat 6.0
(XFree86-3.3.3.1-49). It worked fine for about a month then suddenly xterm
stopped working. I have no idea what I might have inadvertently done to
cause this problem. I have been trying to fix it now for a couple of months
off and on. I cannot do my work without an X terminal of some kind.
I have an older RedHat 4.3 linux system that works fine so I have tried
comparing the two. The working system does not display any xkbcomp or xterm
errors.
-- MY CURRENT THEORY
My guess is that if I could fix the xkbcomp errors, somehow xterm would
work again.
man xkbcomp says that it tries to compile a keymap file (*.xkm) from a
source XKB keymap description (*.xkb). I have searched for any possible
source file with name *.xkb on my working system and found nothing. If I
could somehow manage to create a .xkb (keymap source file), perhaps this
would make xkbcomp happy and it would be able to create the server-0.xkm
file. I don't know. Perhaps I need to create another 'compiled' directory
somewhere else?
-- SOME OTHER THINGS I HAVE ALREADY TRIED, THAT DIDN'T HELP
I have searched the web on these error messages and founding nothing helpful.
I have also searched the [EMAIL PROTECTED] archives and several linux
'knowledge bases' for help with xkbcomp and xterm error messages and found
nothing helpful.
I have posted to the [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I have uninstalled and reinstalled the package
XFree86-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm, which includes both xterm and xkbcomp.
I have tried creating the directory:
/var/X11R6/xkb/compiled
I tried creating an empty file with full read/write permissions:
/var/X11R6/xkb/compiled/server-0.xkm
( As suggested in : http://www.xfree86.org/FAQ/ ):
I disabled the XKB extensions by adding the keyword XkbDisable in the
'Keyboard' section of my XF86Config file.
-- LIST OF REDHAT 6.0 UPDATES I HAVE INSTALLED
Here is the list of updates I have installed so far:
XFree86-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
XFree86-75dpi-fonts-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
XFree86-SVGA-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
XFree86-VGA16-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
XFree86-Xnest-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
XFree86-Xvfb-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
XFree86-devel-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
XFree86-libs-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
XFree86-xfs-3.3.5.1-6.0.i386.rpm
dev-2.7.7-2.i386.rpm
libtermcap-2.0.8-15.i386.rpm
linuxconf-1.16r1.3-1.i386.rpm
rpm-3.0.2-6.0.i386.rpm
utempter-0.5-2.i386.rpm
-- CURRENT BATTLE PLAN
* post this message to the relevant lists (hope somebody can help)
* peruse the XFree86 sources to try and fix the problem (downloading now...)
* recompile the kernel (problems with LILO unable to load large kernel
prevent this now)
* buy a new hard disk to perform clean installation
* file a bug report on XFree86 (don't expect any results)
* file a bug report with RedHat (don't expect any results)
* Last resort: give up on linux; switch to Solaris or other unix
Any ideas or suggestions on a better battle plan would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
greg
PS
I hope nobody takes offense that I posted to this list. I have already
tried the redhat-list and got no help there.
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