I used to get a blue screen saying X has failed to start blah blah blah would I like to view the log blah blah. when I had something Wrong in the xorg.conf or when a device like my mouse was missing. Now it hangs on a blank screen. I can't do anything from that point (Including switching to a VT) because my mouse and keyboard are locked. this problem might just be with xdm I'm not sure. I haven't spent much time trying to figure it out because having to do a hard reset is not good, and trying to crash X is not ideal. but if it's going to crash it should do so without locking up my computer. x11-apps/xdm-1.0.4 x11-base/xorg-server-1.0.2-r3 virtual/x11-7.0-r2 x11-base/xorg-x11-7.0-r1
Created attachment 5552 [details] Xorg.0.log
Actually, this is usually due to the video driver locking up the graphics card. Please attach (as opposed to paste) at least xorg.conf, if possible also a log file (remounting the filesystem containing it with mount -o remount,sync might help retrieving a useful log file).
Created attachment 5553 [details] xorg.conf what's wrong with the Xorg.0.log.old that I've attached? I'm not sure how I would get a more useful log on this...
Whoops, sorry, I totally missed the log file somehow. So the crash only occurs if the evdev driver can't find the device? If so, this might be an evdev driver issue. Note that you might be able to log in remotely and reboot cleanly after this.
oh this is NOT the xorg.conf that caused the crash I already removed the offending lines. however nothing in the video driver section has changed. x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-6.5.8.0
well I can find(In reply to comment #4) > Whoops, sorry, I totally missed the log file somehow. > > So the crash only occurs if the evdev driver can't find the device? If so, this > might be an evdev driver issue. > > Note that you might be able to log in remotely and reboot cleanly after this. well I can cause X to crash for several reasons... In this case I was trying to fix a problem with this. and I might be able to kill X remotely... I'm not sure. but on reboot when X tried to start it black screened again. I ended up booting to a rescue cd and removing the offending line from the configuration. The problem is I should be getting a curses like screen asking if I want to view the log. and then stopping the server so I can edit the xorg.conf. The crash itself isn't a bug it's user error.
(In reply to comment #6) > The crash itself isn't a bug it's user error. No, a crash is always a bug, and it's just not always possible to recover. It might be in this particular case, if so the culprit is most likely the video driver. However, I'd suggest focussing on the crash itself.
hmm... well X failed to initialize because of I tried to have 2 CorePointers. But it was probably the video driver as you suggested why it didn't kill itself. I'm not actually sure which package update caused this. But it wasn't evdev because I haven't updated that since I had to downgrade from an Alpha (or something release) I have updated xf86-video-ati xorg-server and xdm. any ideas?
(In reply to comment #8) > hmm... well X failed to initialize because of I tried to have 2 CorePointers. That doesn't seem to be what the log file says. Do you still have the previous xorg.conf for comparison?
Comment on attachment 5553 [details] xorg.conf >Section "ServerLayout" > > InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" >> InputDevice "Mouse1" > InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard" I can't remember if I had added CorePointer to the end of Mouse1 or not. That was the only change... but I no longer have the copy... There is a bug that... I'm suposed to file on evdev... it changes the eventx if I unplug and replug my usb receiver and X won't read that. which is why I was restarting in the firstplace. However I've heard the driver has been re-written and I'm waiting to see if they fixed it before filing...
The blue curses screen was something added by your distro, not anything distributed by X.Org.
Sorry about the phenomenal bug spam, guys. Adding xorg-team@ to the QA contact so bugs don't get lost in future.
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