kdm & gdm problems (sad story gets longer)

[William O'Higgins]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 12:39:07AM -0400, David J Patrick wrote:
>So, I says to myself, surely this is an older bent version of kdm.
>apt-get to the rescue, right ?
>
>root-FHL3x92oaS0 at public.gmane.org:/mnt/hda8/djp# apt-get install kdm
>Reading Package Lists... Done
>Building Dependency Tree... Done
>You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
>The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> libarts1-mpeglib: Depends: libxv1 but it is not going to be installed
> libarts1-xine: Depends: libxv1 but it is not going to be installed
> mpeglib: Depends: libxv1 but it is not going to be installed
>E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or speci
>olution).
>root-FHL3x92oaS0 at public.gmane.org:/mnt/hda8/djp# apt-get -f install
>Reading Package Lists... Done
>Building Dependency Tree... Done
>Correcting dependencies... Done
>The following extra packages will be installed:
> libxv1
>The following NEW packages will be installed:
> libxv1
>0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 837 not upgraded.
>237 not fully installed or removed.

Okay.  You have bigger|more complex|more interesting problems than not
having .xinitrc.  Not having it is not the end of the world, but you are
sure to have something if you can initiate X from the console.  Show us
the highlights of files starting with .x or .X in $HOME.

The other problems I alluded to are in the last couple of lines I quoted 
of apt-get output:  0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 837 not 
upgraded.  237 not fully installed or removed.

This suggests to me that even though you occasionally run apt-get update,
you don't upgrade your system as a whole.  So, you have a large number
of packages that think they're out of date (837, which is a lot).  Then
there are 237 that are broken or confused.  I am unsure what this means
with regard to your X issues, but it's probably related.*

The switchdesk program I mentioned earlier is in KDE proper.  Can you
start a KDE session?  Or is icewm the only thing that works?

Lastly, you appear to starting your sessions with kdm, which
lets(requires) you to log in graphically.  To kill X off and start fresh
from the console, hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace three times to tell X you
really don't want to play any more, and then see what happens when you
run startx.

* Running apt-get upgrade can be scary and can go wrong, as you have
apparently discovered.  Similarly, apt-get dist-upgrade sidesteps some
of the simple upgrade problems, but presents different ones.  I would
encourage you to find a human safety net to help you through some of
this, and then it will make much more sense to you and you'll be able to
do it for yourself.
-- 

yours,

William

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml