Slackware 10.1 startup issues
 

Hello everyone. I am very new to linux, and have installed Slackware 10.1 on a new system and I'm having a lot of difficulty starting KDE. when I type startkde I get a lot of the following.

xsetroot: unable to open display
xset: unable to open display
xset: unable to open display
xset: unable to open display
xsetroot: unable to open display
startkde: starting up
startkde: running kpersonalizer
kwin: cannot connect to x server
kpersonalizer: cannot connect to x server

and that last line continues to repeat.

What am I doing wrong here?

I am logged in as root and slackware is installed on /dev/hda1.

Firstly, don't login as root - create a normal user account and log in as that. You may mess up your system if you do something accidental and wrong as root.

To get KDE running: first run "xwmconfig" as your normal user (minus the quotes) and select KDE as your window manager. Then run "startx" (again, as the user and without the quotes).

Welcome to LQ :D

ok, I did that, and when I type in startx I get the following.

fatal server error:
no screens found

XIO: fatal IO Error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on x server ":0.0"
after 0 requests with 0 events pending.

and then it takes me back to the prompt. what did I do wrong?

did you configure X properly??

ok, I did that, and went through all of the prompts, all of this while logged in a new user not root, and it saved the file and then I typed startx and it gave me the same fatal error.

Where did you save the file ? The file has to be saved as /etc/X11/xorg.conf
A non-root user cannot write to the /etc directory.

You ran the command xorgconfig as a non-root user, right !
Then in the end it would have asked you where to save the file and by what name. By default (if you were non-root) it would have saved the file in the current directory as xorg.conf


You have two options at hand :

1) run xorgconfig as a root user and save the file as /etc/X11/xorg.conf or,

2) run xorgconfig as a non-root user, save the file as xorg.conf in your current directory. Then as root replace the original /etc/X11/xorg.conf by the one you just created.

Try any of these and post back whatever you find.

Hope this helps.

ok, ran the xorgconfig as root, and did everything according to the prompts, and it saved the file in /etc/x11

logged off and logged back into the system as the non-root user. Ran startx and got the same error message.

Okay ! Post the complete error message. Use the tags for this.

Also, I would like to point out that the file has to be saved as /etc/X11/xorg.conf and not /etc/x11/xorg.conf ( I think that was a typo )
Linux is case sensitive !

yes you are correct it is case sensitive and it was X11, my bad.

I will post the error message in a few minutes.

ok, here it is when I type startx at the prompt.

I don't understand. I choose just a generic VGA compatible adapter with the lowest settings and it still doesn't work.

Hey Conner19,

the problem is coz somehow your graphics card doesn't like the default depth of 24
Reduce the default depth to some lower no. like 16. Here do this :

Open up your xorg.conf file.
Go to the monitor section
Change the default depth there, i.e reduce it to some lower value. Note that, the value that is uncommented (without # sign), is the one that is being used. Save the file and startx again.
Try this with different depths. Tell us what happened.

Some examples of this are :
To use depth of, say 8

Also take a look at this thread. It also deals with a similar problem.

Post back whatever you find.

Ok, something you'll have to understand about me. I'm a complete Windows guy, who is learning linux. I have a Linux + study book to help me, but I still do not completely know how to do these things. I checked the file and it's saying

now how do I change that in the xorg.conf file?

No problems at all. We're all here to help and be helped :)

Also, everybody was a n00b sometime or the other ;)

Do this :


This will make your default depth as 16. If this doesn't work try with depth 8 i.e.



One thing I would like to mention here :

In linux much information is stored in configuration files. In these files usually '#' is used to indicate a comment. like // or /* */ in C/C++


Suppose, you wanted to state what changes you made to get your X running. You could add a comment like :


The whole point is that commented lines i.e. lines beginning with a # sign are ignored by whatever program, that reads that particular file. Therefore, when a program encounters this :


It completely ignores the lines beginning with # and so takes the DefaultDepth to be 16

Hope this helps !

ok, I understand that I need to edit the 24 to 16, but how do I actually do that from the command line? I know how to display the contents of the file, but how do I edit it? do I have to go through xorgconfig again? and if so, at what point to I set it to default on 16?

use a text editor like vi

type "vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf" and vi should load up the configuration file. vi works either in command mode or insert mode. press esc for command mode and type i for insert mode. the bottom right of the screen should tell you what mode youre in. then just go down to the monitor section and edit the file. then go back to command mode and type ":wq" and press enter. this writes the file and quits vi.

hope this helps.