Whenever I try to start XWindows using comman: startx

I get an error message saying:

execve failed for /etc/X11/X (errno 2)
giving up
xinit: no such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): server error

what is going on?? I think i'm in the wrong runlevel and it can't initialize X.... but i don't know how to change it?!?!?!

Hi Bryan...

Runlevel shouldn't matter (unless ofcourse you're in
init 1 :} if that's the case try telinit 3) ... did you set
your xserver up properly?
What distro are you using?

Cheers,
Tink

oh sorry.... I'm running manrake 9.0

I set up my Xserver during installation and it appeared to work fine....

something odd was that I couldn't use the GUI install, i needed to use the text based install?!?!?!

I think maybe it was my usb mouse and/or my video card (radeon 9700 pro)

Have you tried running (I believe) xfdrak? I think this is the mandrake tool for configuring the gui. The normal tool is xf86config. Try using one of those and get your X server set up and then try running startx again. Something else to look for might be whether or not you installed any desktop environments/window managers. Things like KDE/Gnome or Fluxbox, XFCE and so on.

If you did, find the location of one of them, let's try for fluxbox or blackbox just for ease, so locate them with:
whereis fluxbox
If it returns nothing, try:
whereis blackbox
Hopefully one of those are installed. Now, taking either one of those paths that returned from the whereis search, create a file in your user's home directory:
vi .xinitrc
This will open up a new file (if one doesn't exist) in vi to let you edit it to your needs. All we are going to do is make 1 entry just to test this out. So type this:
i
exec /path/to/fluxbox
SHIFT + ZZ

What that will do is turn on insert (i) and then place the line exec /path/to/fluxbox (replace that with the path from above, for either blackbox or fluxbox). And then SHIFT ZZ will save the file and exit vi (actually I think it's vim, no matter though). At this point you have a .xinitrc file in your user's home directory, now try starting x again:
startx
With that particular user. See if you get the same error, or maybe a different one now. I still think you should check out ATI's site about getting your drivers installed, they may also have some instructions on setting up your X server.

Cool

OK i installed the driver (i think) but when i type rpm -i filename

all i get is the next line, nothing else shows up.... does that mean it worked?!?!?!?! The next step on the directions from ati was to configure it with fglrxconfig.... but it doesn't seem to exist!?!?!

but i'm going to print out and follow the directions you gave me... Thanks for all the help sp far marterC...

The fglrxconfig might be something available from them? I've personally never heard of it, nor have I ever had to install drivers from ATI, that's why I suggest a search on this site about it, there are several threads addressing some issues about the install procedure. Also, check out www.google.com/linux for other people's experiences with your card, and how they get it resolved.

Good Luck

Cool

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/l...e&cmdNext=Next

Assuming you've already seen that page, read all the links on there, including the installation tips.

Cool

blackbox and the fluxbox don't exist.....

I tried all the things you told me.... I even set up xf86config AGAIN! and the same error occured... man i'm trully a again.... lol


anything else I should try??

Yeah, try:
whereis xfce
whereis gnome-session

Either one of those should work as well. Just replace the:
/path/to/fluxbox
With:
/path/to/xfce
OR
/path/to/gnome-session
So it might look like:
/usr/bin/xfce
OR
/usr/bin/gnome-session

Cool