I installed debian 3.1 sarge on a Compaq evo D510.
I installed via netinstall and everything went smooth as butter.
I had a mirror real close to my location and it was very speedy...

I had a problem last night as I was exiting KDE and Gnome. I would log out of them and it would beep but not go back to the graphical greeter.
The screen would go black. I would go to another terminal and reboot to get back to the greeter. How do I find the problem? Where would the log file be?
I have been using debian based distros for a while and was confused not to find a xorg.conf today while trying to check my x settings. I ran xf86config to see if doing the setting manually would fix the problem and it didn't.

Regards,
Blair

Sarge uses Xfree86, not xorg, so the config file you're looking for would be /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 instead of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

SID uses xorg, and probably ETCH too, but Sarge is still on the older XFree86.

The logfile you're looking for would be /var/log/XFree86.0.log

You probably don't need to go all the way to a reboot to recover either. Pop on over to a different virtual terminal and, as root, "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" then "/etc/init.d/gdm start".

Next time you might also try the Xwindows escape CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE while stuck in your black screen, before advancing to the gdm stop, or a reboot.

I don't know what your specific problem might be, but the logfile would of course be your first place to start looking.

Thank you for the quick reply.
I will check the log file.
I tried ctrl+alt+bkspc last night and the screen remained black.
I will try gdm stop.
Hopefully an easy fix.

Regards,
Blair

Hi DeadPenguing
Perhaps it's the problem with arts daemon, perhaps it's not, check out this post
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=393664

I just ran across that post this morning.

Thanks. I will try it tonight when I get home.

Regards,
Blair

Do apt-get install kdm gdm as this will give you the option to end the user session, reboot or shutdown.

I already have the option to log off reboot or shutdown, it just crashes logging off of kde/gnome.

Check /var/log/XFree86.0.log for the error.

I ended up copying a XF86Config-4 file from a live cd(Kanotix) and used it to fix my broken xfree.
It worked.
Thanks for the help.

Regards,
Blair