I went to the link listed. Downloaded the rpm. I got a dependency problem that it wasn't using XFree-4.3-6... So I went to the updates directory and found a XFree-4.3-8.1 both XFree and XFree-server. Downloaded them, installed them, doesn't fix it. What's worse, the alternate user setup that was working stopped. I have a third user setup and it still does work.

With the link, there was a discussion as well. There was mention of forcing the server to restart. But there was no mention of KDM. Is there a way to set this in KDM? The bigger question is, will this help? I know, it doesn't hurt to try.

Tom Williams

OK, I don't get this, but it worked. I decided to take one of the throw-away accounts and play with it to see if I could get it to work. I first tried deleting .kde folder. Didn't help. Then just on a whim I deleted a file named .xinitrc It worked. The second user account would then startup in X. So, I took my main account and did the same thing. Coincidently the file was 0 bytes. I deleted it, it now works. What is the .xinitrc file supposed have in it? If its 0 length that would explain why it doesn't start up. What it doesn't explain is how it got like that.

I haven't tried doing that with root, but I suspect it'll work the same in it. thanks for the help.

~/.xinitrc - X uses this file when you type startx from a text-mode login

I knew that. What I didn't know was that if its 0 length it wouldn't allow X to startup. For that matter, is there a bug that made it go 0 length?

It's just a bash script, like a text file but executable. Mine's about 200 bytes. It just calls a lot of other scripts that start X from what I can see. If it's empty, nothing is going to happen. As to it getting zeroed out, I would suspect your unsuccessful attempt to install the ati patch or the install of the new XFree. You need root privileges to write to it so some process running with root privileges did it.