I seem to have screwed the pooch as it were with my SuSE 10 OSS install. I had it running quite well, with very little left to get fixed. In trying to get one of the last 2 things I needed to work... to work... I apparently broke something... badly.

I was trying to get the forward/back buttons of my Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 to function, and followed the instructions of another thread here on LQ.

I was told to make changes as a root user(which not being root didn't allow it, so I logged in a root session).

I made a single change to the mouse options in etc/x11/xorg.conf changing the mapping buttons from "4 5" to "6 7".

Then, not having a profile.local in the etc/ folder, I did as suggested and created one, putting in the only line I knew to, which was a mouse mapping line.

I then rebooted to be welcomed toa terminal only session as KDE and Gnome cannot load due to x11 failure. I get something about a $DISPLAY not loading in the error, if you need to know specifics, I would happily supply exactly what errors I recieve.

Can anyone tell me exactly how to reverse the damage? And so I can learn from this, what it was I did that was bad?

Hi,
You can start with renaming /etc/profile.local to /etc/profile.local.old. Then try to get to KDE/GNOME. If still it doesn't work, you can open your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (or whichever yours is) and modify those entries related to mouse settings. Also check your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file (towards the end) for errors.

--cyberjun

Okay, I did as you suggested. One at a time. I did the profile.local to profile.local.old, then I rebooted. No go, so I did the xorg.conf reedit(or unedit) and rebooted. Still in terminal mode.

So I checked out the log you mentioned. Some error in line 50.

So I checked out line 50, and somehow it was 3 characters that should have been in line 49 had been moved down.

I borked it myself apparently, causing an error in running the conf.

Thank you so much for pointing out those logs.

Did you back up your xorg.conf file before altering it? Do so from now on before altering any configuration files.

I am not sure exactly what went on, but SuSE can not launch X (that much is obvious). What kind of graphics card do you have?
Some helpful tools you can launch under the console as root are "yast" and "sax2" and "you". These are graphical. See if something can be used to restore your system or to launch a rescue. Yast is the system configuration tool. SaX2 is the display configuration and You is the Yast Online Update.

If all else fails you can use your installation cd to restore the system.

I am sorry I can not be more specific, but I am currently in the process of upgrading to SuSE 10 and trying to iron out a few bugs. Otherwise I would get into the system here and find an answer for you. It might be quicker restoring your system via the installation cd than it would to give you a specific answer to your question

A word of advise. SuSE is very heavily reliant on its GUI to configure its system. It tries to limit the ways you can screw up your system. Only as a last resort should you ever touch the config files because SuSE usually has a tool to do it for you (sometimes they don't work, but better than most). When you get KDE started, you can search help and the Control Center utility to tell you how to do things.

Be careful when following advise from people who don't use the distro that you are using. Easy to tell because they usually have it in the sidebar of thier message. Often folks want you to use the command line when you really should not. SuSE does things differently than a lot of distros.

I am sorry. Got busy and did not read thouroughly. Did you say your problem is fixed? What does borked mean? Sorry I am a southerner and not sure about denver slang. Sorry if I did not address your problem, but what I said may help someone else so I will leave it.

Borked is gamer slang, not Denver slang. It means a patch or change massively hampered the functionality of the product. So basically I F***ed it up real good, myself.

I did fix the problem with cyberjun's advice, that log file gave me exactly the issue, I had put in a carriage return in the middle of a line which caused the .conf to not be read properly, and it therefore wouldn't allow init of the DE. Once I figured that out, I got it fixed, and now things are running again.

And the advice I originally followed was from our SuSE forum, I made the changes they suggested, and inadvertantly another one. That carriage return...I am sure the actual advice part, of the "6 7" button usage will work once I give it a shot again.

And yes, I learned the hard way having a backup of any of that kind of file I change will be a very good idea.

I tried to do that system restore from the install CD first, but it only brought up a recovery terminal, so I had no idea what to do from there. I will have to look into how to use it in case something actually happens instead of just a little boner from my end which is easily repaired.

Thanks for the adive though.

Just thought I would pass along. My SuSE 10.0 was officially born at 6pm this evening. We had a few problems with the monitor refresh rates, but so far so good. Not really all that different from 9.3