Hey there,
I've been working on a Gentoo install for my friend in Canada over the weekend, and I've almost got everything set up properly. I'm having a bit of trouble with Xorg 6.8.2, you see.
Initially, I had xorg (plus whatever dependencies emerge took care of), xdm, gnome, kde, and fluxbox installed and working wonderfully. Everything was perfectly fine. Then he wanted the closed-source nVidia drivers for gaming purposes.
So, he tried to do the installation of them himself. He removed rivabf support from the kernel, because the nvidia driver installer complained about it. This has since been recompiled as a kernel module.
Half-way through the install done with the nVidia installer (from their website), he decided that he would use the ebuild gentoo provided instead. So emerge nvidia-kernel nvidia glx (the latest and greatest ones in ~amd64) was run. The xorg config file was edited accordingly, and X was started.
However, my friend reports that X started. showed the nVidia logo, and promptly died. He had been starting it with /etc/init.d/xdm. He tried a few times with other commands - startx, startkde, bla bla bla, only to have the same thing occur. On a closer examination, I noted that the X processes were running.
I checked his log files for both xdm and Xorg. There were no errors, and it seems as if they started cleanly and should be running. And according to ps, they /were/ running, but the screen was black.
Thinking this was the nVidia driver's screwing something up, nvidia-glx and nvidia-kernel were unemerged. The xorg config was changed back, and X was restarted.
But, for the sake of god, it didn't fix the problem. I tried everything I could think of to fix it, but X just flashed on his screen for a second and then went black. (Not to a console, just black.)
Xorg was recompiled, and the config was regenerated. The problem was still presemt. I fiddled with the driver for the card. What it had been on when it was working, nv, caused the screen-black problem. Vesa, which I'm told sometimes works with GeForce FX 5200 cards, caused the monitor to turn off. And vga suffered from the same problem as nv.
So, I have don't really know what's wrong with X. I'm guessing one of the things it depends on became damaged during the attempted nVidia install, but I don't really know.
Any pointers would be GREATLY appreciated, as I've been struggling with this for a few days now.
And here are the relevant logs/configs.
Clicky.
Thanks to anyone who tries to help.