kdm & gdm problems (sad story gets longer)

David J Patrick davidjpatrick-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org
Mon Apr 12 16:04:50 UTC 2004


William O'Higgins wrote:

>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.
>  
>
there's
.wmrc (doesn't start with .x*, but seemed relevent, contains merely 
"kde") then
.Xauthority  .Xdefaults .xfdeskmenurc  .xfwm4rc  .xgalscores  
.xkoules-controls  .xscreensaver  .xsession-errors  .xskat.opt

>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of packages that think they're out of date (837, which is a lot).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?
>  
>
icewm, fluxbox, xfce (but not xfce4) work fine. It's only those that I 
updated that are broken ..

>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.
>  
>
Annoyingly, kdm bounces to life after the first invocation of 
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, and I can't seem to get past it !

>* Running apt-get upgrade can be scary and can go wrong, as you have
>apparently discovered.  
>
It only crippled my system 3 out of 4 times. I understand that the whole 
system will otherwise slide slowly into a broken|confused state, so 
what's a guy to do ?

>Similarly, apt-get dist-upgrade sidesteps some
>of the simple upgrade problems, but presents different ones.
>
Worth trying first ?

>  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.
>  
>
Yes, I like the sound of that, Sadly, web-footed gurus are not exactly 
lined up to de-munge my bent box. This is something I feel we TLUGnuts 
should set up; penguin home delivery at reasonable rates.
Sometimes I wonder if some of my trouble isn't a result of the fact that 
this debian install was spawned from a knoppix 3.2 HD install (not 100% 
debian) and I am considering a full re-install via bonzai.
I appreciate your efforts to help, your a good man William O'Higgins !
cheers,
djp

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