Sometimes when I do something on the system, my xorg.conf file gets somehow changed back to the original using the nv for graphics.

Here is what I want. If I reboot the system sometimes, the xorg might be overwritten to the orig configuration, one using the nv driver. If that happens and I boot in X, I can't see anything on the screen. It's waiting for me to login.

Is it possible to have the login, timeout after so many seconds and have it boot back to a console login?


thanks

How is your original xorg.conf being overwritten? It should be left alone during a reboot. I'm pretty sure that the only time it should even be messed with is when you startx or modify it by hand. When it's waiting for you to login, is it giving you an actual login screen? You may want to just try setting your init to go to a text login runlevel, not sure how to do it on your distro.

First, that's strange that your xorg.conf file gets modified. Can't you fix this?
And then, for the timeout, how do "boot in X"?

I don't know how it got changed, only that it did. I'm wondering if the FAM service has something to do with it.

How I boot to X, is that after everything loads in via the kernel, it runs KDM.

Well, you could always do something like In your /etc/rc.local or whatever your distro uses. And you could modify it to check timestamps to see if you actually need to replace it or not.

to boot into the command line interface you change the default run levle to 3
in the /etc/inittab file in all distros
MAKE A BACK UP COPY AND A BOOT DISK BEFOR YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING /etc/inittab
be extreemly careful with /etc/inittab ANY typo in this file could cause your system to NOT BOOT

I think what happened is you upgraded the distro somehow, probably intentionally, and when you added the new packages it reset xorg to use the nv driver. This can happen. If you are at the x terminal screen and you can't see anything, hit CTRL+ALT+F1 to get another terminal login. Then, fix the problem by reinstalling the nvidia driver using the xorg configuration tool for your distro. If you didn't change kernels you can edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and switch to the nvidia driver everywhere it says nv in that file. Then:

ps aux | grep 'kdm'
kill <procid>

Where procid is the first number in the row listing kdm.

Or

ps aux | grep 'gdm'
kill <procid>

Then:

gdm

or

kdm

should start X.

.. if you don't want your xorg.conf modified, why not just remove write permissions on it?

@ rob.rice:

It's just a configuration file .. don't be so dramatic

P.S.: I can boot runlevel 3 and *still* have XDM/KDM/GDM/whatever be brought up on boot up as a regular init script. So I think we should know more about the OP's distribution.

the system dosn't check permissions when it is running as root
at boot time the system is running as though root was running the scripts and the file could still be over written

try setting your default run levle to 3 unless you have changed the levle 3 part of the boot scripts or the levle 3 boot scripts it will boot to the CLI and what ever GDM,KDM and XDM can be run from the command line only after you login

there are some things that are standard in all distros

/etc/inittab is the root of all boot scripts and the one that can force you to have to reinstll should it get messed up if you don't have some other way to boot and a back up copy
I think there is way too little strees around here put on backing up the /etc files files befor they are chainged

AwesomeMachine
IF your running slackware you have only 1 vt you can log in to should something go wrong with
booting in to X it's on vt 6

@ rob.rice:

Look, grab Gentoo, emerge gdm/kdm/whatever you want. Make sure your system has the default runlevel set to "3". Then issue the following:

That will bring up gdm when you boot. Now reboot. Now see that you have GDM being brought up on boot AND you are in runlevel 3.

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I think I will change the default boot up to runlevel 3.


Thanks again.

I run slackware-11.0 I don't have an rc-update file any where on my system
I checked as root I ran "find / -name rc-update -print "
But my best guess about what this command dose on a gentoo or a redhat like
distro would be to add gdm to one of the start up scripts or to add a script
to /etc/rc3.d or what ever I see no contradiction to what I sed the start up scripts are still being changed
Slack has just one set of start up scripts not one set for each run levle
so if the start up scripts get messed up for one run levle they are most likly messed up for all run levles so I quickly got in to the habit of backing up my files in /etc

there are times when run levle 3 is the place to be like builing a new kernel or some other large program let the compiller have the resources that X would use or reserve