Slackware startx not working
 

Hi,
Google hasn't returned anything relevant for this.

Fresh install of Slackware 13.37, when i enter startx the prompt basically does nothing, it doesn't return an error message at all it just goes to another prompt line.

Am i missing something?

I've tried it as root, as well as created a new user to try it. Both no joy.
Any ideas?

Firstly, why are you attempting to startx as root?

Because i tried as user. It should work as root as well. That is not the issue.

Do startx again as a normal user
Post some outputs

hmmm in both of those it just returns No such file or directory

I definitely had all of the XWindows stuff selected on install, the only thing left out was the foreign languages pack.

There is specific Slackware are in this forum. As Slack is quite special distro, this newbie section is not the best place to find solutions.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/

however you can go to /var/log/packages and see there, what packages are installed? how many "xorg-server-*" packages are there? You really need to install basically everything under x and selectively under xap (or all if HD space permits). The language packages you are referring to are probably the KDE ones.

Please do not startx as root.

Was it a full install?

It shouldn't happen on a fresh install, but make sure there's a desktop environment / window manager selected in xwmconfig.

OK thanks for your input everyone, this definitely shouldn't happen with a fresh install so i must have done something wrong in setup, will start over again. I just wanted to check like i wasn't missing something obvious. Will post to slackers forum in future.

Cheers

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <SLACKWARE> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

You actually can start an X session in root, but beware that as root your system is more vulnerable, so try not to mess around as a root user unless absolutely needed. Root is for system administration, not normal work. If you do need root access just use the "sudo" or "su" tools to run things as with root privileges or as root through user.

You probably have an installation that may or may not have everything installed from the installation disk if that's the route you went. You could try to navigate to /etc/slackpkg and see if the "mirrors" file is editable with the text editor "nano", uncomment a choice file server, save the file and the run slackpkg with upgrade-all and install-new to see if it can remote install and repair your system.

Check if your user(s) are in the correct groups?

For fun, you could've tried booting into runlevel 4 [via /etc/inittab]... my guess is X was not installed.

Wouldn't make sense, [X] contains xinit which is what what contains /usr/bin/startx. He didn't get "startx: No such file or directory", but it is likely he hasn't done a full install, or isn't a part of the necessary groups since startx generally works out of the box.

The groups for the user(s) should include the "video" group in order to access x11 correctly, which is normally a default, however he ran startx as root which has full permissions systemwide.

Running slackpkg or even pkgtool to check the packages should at least see if packages were or weren't installed.

If X wasn't installed a "startx" would yield:
bash: startx: command not found

No?

Try to run "xorgconfig" as root to set up your graphics card correctly.

Thanks for moving to slackware section

OK, i reinstalled it from the 3 iso files i got from this mirror site , and accepted all the defaults for a full install. I was also following this step-by-step setup guide and noticed that it didn't prompt me to select a windows manager as in the examples.

startx didn't work again, couldn't find it in the /usr/bin folder

I ran slackpkg update then upgrade-all. Took ages. It returned md5sum errors for samba, seamonkey, vsftpd and yasm packages.

I can now see startx and startxfce4 in usr/bin but it still won't work.

I have 4 xorg-server packages in /var/log/packages: xephyr, xnest, xvfb, and xorg-server-1.9.5-i486-1
In pkgtools view i see x11-skel, x11-ssh, x11-perf packages

Look in /etc/X11/xinit. Are there any xinitrc.whateverDEorWMs in there?

can you try with
as root, that should just work.
And then again another messing un with slackpkg :/ I'm sorry but now you have to fix that for first:
edit your /etc/slackpkg/slackpkg.conf
set
(you will set on checkgpg later)

then go with the sequence
Yes type it two times because of xfce :)
This way you should have a working and updated slackware, just be careful with config files :)
Also you may want to update to slackware-current, this morning Pat wrote this:

This applies to Slackware -current, but not to 13.37.

I see 6 ISOs on that page. Which of them do you have downloaded and used for your install?
Anyways, if you have slackpkg configured to point to a mirror of your choice (uncomment one near you for 13.37 in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors) you can install missing packages withThis should help if missing packages really are your issue.

So should i reverse those changes to the config?

I downloaded the first 3, as it didn't prompt me for any more disks. But actually there must have been something wrong, because when i went through the whole thing again and had everything selected to install ... but there's no sign of X11 in /etc at all! So will slackpkg install slackware get me the X package as a whole?

cheers

[QUOTE=Celyr;4750776]can you try with
as root, that should just work.

Thanks, the telinit keeps giving me the " ID x1 respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes" message, trying to do the same thing over and over, should i just kill it?

You can switch back to init 3
I think that your installation isn't complete, try out what TobiSGD said:
this should install the packages that you left out.

You can leave the DOWLOAD_ALL option on, this wil just cause that all packages are downloaded before they are installed/upgraded, but I would recommend to set the CHECKGPG option back to on.

It will give you a standard full install, including X.

There was something wrong with the size of my partitions. Originally i set 4 partitions with 1 as boot (10gb); 2 as swap (4gb); 3 with /usr mounted (3gb); 4 with /home mounted (3gb). Then i did it again with the sized bumped up because something had to be missing, to 10/7/7/7 and i have it now. Don't know which one is relevant, probably the second partition. Sorry for not doing this earlier, although i do feel like i've learnt a lot about package management just by following your instructions.

Thanks for all your help!