I've just downloaded the "hoary hedgehog" beta and installed it on my old IBM 600X laptop. I used "warty warthog" on it for a while (a few months) without this problem.

I've tried deleting (eventually all) the config files and dirs from my home directory, but it does the same thing... just after the brown background appears, the disk stops chugging and the mouse cursor is all that's displayed. The cursor works, but that's it.

I've tried manually killing off my processes, by using the text vtty login on ctrl-alt-f1, but none of the processes individually seem to be the cause of the hangup. The only thing that makes any difference is killing X itself, which is kind-of counter productive ;-)

X-Window isn't crashing as far as I can tell, because it stays running, consuming practically no cpu. There are no errors shown in /var/log/Xorg.log.

Anyone got any ideas what might be choking? My bet is something Gnome related, but I'm more familiar with KDE, and Gnome has changed a lot since I last used it heavily (C 1999). Next step is to put debugging echoes into startx, I guess!!

regards,
-cybervegan (Ubuntu, but not Linux newbie)

Update: it's esd, the sound daemon that's crashing.

Investigation underway ;-)

-cybervegan

Hey CV,

Did you ever solve this problem? I'm having exactly the same issue.

Thanks

BTD

No, not yet - really busy lately, no time to play ;-(

As I'm not that familiar with the debian system layout, and I can't remember exactly what I did, all I can really say is this: I think I used the quick'n'dirty, underhanded method of renaming esd to something else, and letting it silently fail...

I used:
"Root shell" under "applications/system tools"
find / -name esd # to find where it's hiding
mv <directory path from find>/esd <directory path from find>/esd.disabled # fill in the path from what find told you

Just in case you don't know, the stuff after the #'s is just my rambling - don't type it(not trying to teach grandma to suck eggs).

Note that this is not really a fix, just a kludge, and those better versed in deb/ubuntu should be able to tell you a better way - one that gives you sound, too, hopefully!

hope that helps ;-)

-cybervegan