Multiple X Servers?!?!?!?

Paul King pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org
Sun Jan 9 12:51:34 UTC 2005


Well, I have at least come to the conclusion that *something* is buggy, and I 
am suspecting a script (startx, or more likely xinit). Resposes below:

On 8 Jan 2005 at 23:22, Anton Markov wrote:

> Paul King wrote:
> > Oops! I am not sure what made my attachment become a separate email.
> > 
> > Apologies if all you saw was my X log output and nothing else. It was meant
> > mainly for Robert (and anyone else) who might have been curious as to what is
> > causing multiple X instances to be invoked on my machine.
> 
> The X server log is probably for only _one_ of the sessions (you should 
> see several logs like '/var/log/XFree86.#.log' where # is '0' and up).

These are the X server logs themselves, which do not seem to report anything 
above a warning. No serious errors. There are also logs under 
/var/log/gdm/:n.X.log  (or something like that), where n is the number of the 
display. They appear to have reported that they have crashed, but don't say 
why. X didn't crash, but gdm tried to restart itself and found an X server in 
the way.

> 
>  From your origional message I take it that you run gdm, but this should 
> work for kdm and xdm too:
> 
> Try switching to a console, logging in as root, and stoping then 
> starting the gdm server with '/etc/init.d/gdm restart'. If it is causing 
> multiple instances to start up, that script ('/etc/init.d/gdm') is 
> probably the culprit. You should try simply running 'gdm' as root and 
> see if it works normally.

Restarting gdm as root results in the above crash/restart problem described 
above. The crash leaves an instance of gdm still running (as ps suggests). Both 
instances can be killed using the init script.

> 
> If some gdm script is the culprit, try 'dpkg-reconfigure gdm', 

I get:
invoke-rc.d: initscript gdm, action "reload" failed.

> and if 
> that doesn't help, 'dpkg -P gdm; apt-get install gdm', which will 
> reinstall gdm and re-create all the configuration files / scripts. (You 
> may want to back up '/etc/gdm' first). I am not sure if there is a more 
> "proper" way to do this in Debian.

Because this is the result of an upgrade of a package (which then asked if I 
wanted to install over 400 packages), I am wondering if something got upgraded 
that shouldn't. Either I now have to do a dist-upgrade, or somehow roll back my 
install to the last stable version.

> 
> Using 'startx' directly works fine, right?

X as a command works and appers stable (you get the stippled blank desktop with 
mouse). Using either startx or xinit crashes right away, falling back to the 
command line. I checked those scripts, and there is more stuff than I'm used to 
seeing in there.

> 
> -- 
> Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")>
> 
> GnuPG Key fingerprint =
> 5546 A6E2 1FFB 9BB8 15C3  CE34 46B7 8D93 3AD1 44B4
> 
> *** LINUX - MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU! ***
> 
> 
> __________ NOD32 1.966 (20050108) Information __________
> 
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> http://www.nod32.com
> 
> 

=========================================================
Paul King              http://www3.sympatico.ca/pking123/


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