I have Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). I was trying to install xinetd (as part of a VistA install--that's the VA's medical software, runs on the GT.M Mumps language package -- it's a complicated install, so I was following written instructions). I suspect I typed something wrong, because the next time I rebooted the screen remained black, except for the slowly turning mouse cursor. I tried to uninstall xinetd, hoping inetd would come back, but I suspect it isn't configured now.

I can sort of start a new Xserver by typing

startx -- :1

--I get a new Gui desktop, and it seems usable, but if I switch to the terminal to see what error messages there are, then switch again with Alt-F7, I see the black screen.

On the terminal I see several errors:

(EE) xf86OpenSerial: Cannot open device /dev/input/wacom
No such file or directory
Error opening /dev/input/wacom : Success
[these three lines repeated three times]
Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc, removing from list! [repeat with cyrillic and Type1]

The terminal seems to hang at that point; entering a ctrl-C gives:

xinit: unexpected signal 2.
[prompt]$

My questions are: 1). Any suggestions how to fix this situation?
2). I'd like to upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10; will that fix it?

Thanks
--Steve

1) From a shell, you can try sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg -- the safest choice for video driver is usually VESA, but others may work depending on your video card.
2) I don't know, but it might be worth a shot.

No, that didn't seem to change anything. I did Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart the graphic screen, but it didn't restart.

Then from the terminal once more I did

startx -- :1

I got the X interface back, and before I did anything else I ran a distribution upgrade from the graphic upgrade manager. It said it couldn't do a full upgrade, only a partial, so I agreed to that. It says it's going to take 2 hours (my internet connection is pretty slow and flaky). I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks,
--Steve