Hi all,

I've got some serious problems with getting Xserver to function on an old Toshiba Satellite laptop running on Debian Lenny with a 2.6.25-1 Sid Kernel (I've also got 2.6.18-4 and 2.6.24-1 installed on the system.)

The base system is up and running. I want to keep it slim so I installed just the trident and the vesa video driver together with the base xorg/xserver packages. I topped it off with a couple of my favorite wm (fluxbox and openbox). I edited the .xinitrc to contain #! /bin/bash and exec fluxbox (no login manager as I want to keep it slim).

When I run startx the screen just goes black and the computer freezes up. This happen I've tried it with openbox too with same result. I've also tried it with an auto-generated xorg.conf and with an older config-file that I used under Etch (though I know it's not guaranteed to work with Lenny) and it produces the same result. Xorg.0.log doesn't show any errors or warnings whatsoever. When trying this under the other kernels I also get the same result.

As the problems persists with different kernels, with different wm and different xorg.conf I gather that I have a fairly fundamental problem. I even tried to install xdm and when I rebooted I got the same effect.

The problem is that as I can't see any error messages I don't really have anything to work with (or at least I don't know where to look for them). I tried to startx with standard error directed to a file but that just produced a few lines that said that a specific module was already loaded.My Xorg.0.log doesn't contain any significant error (just a missing cyrilic font but that's hardly the issue).

I'm totally lost here. Has anyone any ideas on this or has run into something similar? Any and all help is very much appreciated.

Cheers!

ps: For what it's worth, the laptop has worked fine with a number of other distribution - recently too - so a hardware malfunction can be ruled out. ds.

I would remove the xinitrc file and try startx and see what happens. Then if it still does it I would remove my xorg.conf file and try startx and see what happens.


.

Thanks for the reply.

I gave it a go but unfortunately it didn't work.

Any other ideas? Anyone?

Cheers

it didn't work......uh ok....



.

If with no other X should work with 2.6.24-1 kernel.Did you use a live cd of some distribution?If you did,is X working then?When you've tried to start X have you done it as a user or/and root.You've not mentioned anything about faillog,kern.log and messages in /var/log.Did you tried to reconfigure X server(and not just using the xorg.conf files that you already have)?It may be that you have run into the dependency issue,too by running sid and etch kernels on lenny.

Hi,

I've used live CD on other distros and have other distros installed. Worked fine with thoese.

I've tried to startx as both user and root, same result

The problem was there before I installed the Etch and Sid Kernel so I don't think there are any dependency issues (nor did the kernels install or remove any additional packages).

I tried to reconfigure but the result is the same.

As for error messages, I get no output in xorg.0.log but it got me thinking. I had a look in kern.log and what I reacted on that there was no sing of trident. I had another look in lsmod and no sign of trident there either. So, I modprobed trident and tried to startx with a xorg.conf using the trident driver but same result. Might be that the module trident is actually a sound driver and not the raphic driver but I don't know what the module is used for the graphic driver.I've installed xserver-xorg-video-trident and that is, afaik, the correct driver.

For what it's worht, I tried both "trident" and "vesa" as driver in xorg.conf

Thanks for the help.

Any other ideas?

The lame-way of doing it:

Find a debian (or derivate) LiveCD that works and looks what's installed. Like xorg.conf, loaded kernel modules, and inspect Xorg.0.log to see what Xorg modules are loaded.

With latest Xorg, you don't even need an xorg.conf, everything should be detected (not the keyboard mapping maybe..)

edit:
About "slim". Did you look at the size of video drivers packages? I don't think it's worth it..
so you could:
aptitude install xorg-video-all
mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.orig
Restart

I wouldn't call it lame, sounds like a pretty good idea. I tried Knoppix v. 5.11 KDE LiveCD and it booted up nicely. I saved Xorg.0.log, xorg.conf and an output of lsmod on a usbstick. The xorg.conf didn't really contain anything out of the ordinary but I'm gonna look into the differences between my current lsmod and the one from the liveCD (there were quite a few different modules). Together with the Xorg.0.log I should be able to figure out what I need to get X going because I really thing this is the issue. I'll post back once I gotten around to it.

Thanks for the help!

I don't know if You are still interested in this, but I managed to find a solution. See this for more details.
In general - You need to add
to Your xorg.conf in a monitor section.

Well, I currently have Arch installed on my old lappie but - how do I put this nice without starting a flamewar? ... bah, bring on the god damn flamewar, who cares? - since Arch is the dogs breath compared to Debian I have been thinking about what to install on it instead of Arch. Considering that I run Debian testing on my desktop and Debian stable on my server I guess the only option is to install Debian unstable on the laptop. This will surely come in handy if/when I do. Thanks.

/CZ

You've likely already tried this, but, if not, perhaps running the command "dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg" would help (as root or sudo). This is the advice given in recent xorg.conf files that I've seen.

Otherwise, just randomly try installing and running different xserver-xorg video files, until you find one that works. Or, just install the meta-packages xserver-xorg-video-all (which will only add about 6 MB to your system), and xserver-xorg-input-all (an additional 2 MB). If you can get it working, you could then peel away some of the unnecessary packages later.

I finally dusted off my old laptop again and installed Sid. Same problem as I had with Lenny so I tried this solution. I just want to confirm that is indeed the way to solve the problem. Thanks.