start KDE from command line (Debian Lenny on iMac)

turtle21 · 01-22-2010, 06:11 AM

Hello,

my first posting here! I have a nearly 10 years old iMac at home and installed Lenny on (somehow, I had to thrash Mac OS 9.2 :-P). Everything was successful until now, but on entering "startkde", the screen fills with

kpersonalizer: cannot connect to X server

lines. Upon looking at other threads here I tried mdetect, installing X11... but to no avail.

Best thanks for your help!

David

Agrouf · 01-22-2010, 07:10 AM

try

Code:

startx

turtle21 · 01-22-2010, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agrouf

try

Code:

startx

Thank you... I'll try it.

And it failed, here's the console output...

Code:

X.Org X Server 1.4.2

[...]

Invalid IO Allocation b: ... e: ... correcting
end of block range ... < begin ...
Unable to find a valid framebuffer device
R128: Failed to open framebuffer device, consult warnings and/or errors...
Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

waiting for X server to begin accepting connections
giving up.
xinit: Connection reset by peer (errno 104): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

"..." were hexadecimal numbers (pointers, I believe you call them).

How can I resolve this problem?

Agrouf · 01-22-2010, 08:48 AM

What is your graphic card?
In any case, you can use the subobtimal vesa driver (that won't use the advanced features of your graphic card if any)
Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
In the [Device] section, change the driver to "vesa"

turtle21 · 01-22-2010, 09:07 AM

According to this site:

Video Card: Rage 128 VR 2D/3D VRAM Type: SDRAM
Details: ATI Rage 128 VR 2D/3D video with 8 MB of VRAM.

I'm trying now with the VESA configuration...

Agrouf · 01-22-2010, 09:15 AM

I believe you should use the "r128" driver then
The command "lspci" will tell you what card is actually present in the box.

turtle21 · 01-22-2010, 09:57 AM

Hi again,

with nano I've changed the line you mentioned to "vesa". Before, it already was "r128".

Either way, with "vesa" or "r128", it still gives the errors I have written above:

Code:

X.Org X Server 1.4.2

[...]

Invalid IO Allocation b: ... e: ... correcting
end of block range ... < begin ...
Unable to find a valid framebuffer device
R128: Failed to open framebuffer device, consult warnings and/or errors...
Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

waiting for X server to begin accepting connections
giving up.
xinit: Connection reset by peer (errno 104): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

i92guboj · 01-22-2010, 10:04 AM

Are you sure you changed the file and saved the changes? I still see the r128 driver complaining in that output, not the vesa one.

However, your best option is to upload these two files to a service like pastebin.ca:

Code:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf
/var/log/Xorg.0.log

So we can review them and see what's happening.

About kde, you need to put this line into a file called ~/.xinitrc:

Code:

startkde

Otherwise, the "startx" command will start the default session (usually twm and a few xterm's), or whatever you have configured in your distro by default, which will surely not be kde. But, if X is failing to start, that's the first thing to worry about. Kde will not work without X, of course.

turtle21 · 01-22-2010, 12:09 PM

http://www.pastebin.ca/1761800 here are is the log and also the xorg.conf file...

By the way, you forced me to look up how to mount an USB stick and copy these files. Until now, I have 30 minutes of Linux experience... learning by doing.

turtle21 · 01-22-2010, 12:13 PM

Quote:

About kde, you need to put this line into a file called ~/.xinitrc:

Code:

startkde

Otherwise, the "startx" command will start the default session (usually twm and a few xterm's), or whatever you have configured in your distro by default, which will surely not be kde. But, if X is failing to start, that's the first thing to worry about. Kde will not work without X, of course.

Hm, and where do I put .xinitrc?

i92guboj · 01-22-2010, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by turtle21

Hm, and where do I put .xinitrc?

In your home directory. What I wrote above is a shortcut for that. '~' means the home dir, just like $HOME. So, '~/.xinitrc' is a file called '.xinitrc' which is located in your home directory.

I will review the logs above as soon as I can. I have no idea if that will be today, real life always gets in the middle :P , but other members around might be able to help as well.

i92guboj · 01-22-2010, 12:44 PM

On a quick look, I can see that your video card section has no "Driver" line on it. So, your Xorg is using using autodetection, and picking what it thinks is the best available driver, which in your case is the r128 one. That driver is throwing a few warnings (WW) and some error messages (EE) in the Xorg.0.log file. My inexperience with this concrete driver prevents me from being able to give further insight on what the problem is until I can research a bit more.

In any case, if you want to try the vesa driver, you can try to modify your video driver section, just add one line, so it looks like this:

Code:

#
Section "InputDevice"
#
        Identifier      "Generic Keyboard"
#
        Driver    "kbd"
#
        Option    "XkbRules"        "xorg"
#
        Option    "XkbModel"        "pc104"
#
        Option    "XkbLayout"       "us"
#
EndSection
#
 
#
Section "InputDevice"
#
        Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
#
        Driver    "mouse"
#
EndSection
#
 
#
Section "Device"
#
        Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
        Driver          "vesa"
#
EndSection
#
 
#
Section "Monitor"
#
        Identifier      "Configured Monitor"
#
EndSection
#
 
#
Section "Screen"
#
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
#
        Monitor  "Configured Monitor"
#
EndSection

After that, save the xorg.conf file and try again. Look at the log file and see if it's picking the vesa driver instead of the r128 one.

turtle21 · 01-22-2010, 02:43 PM

Thank you, but the problem is still not solved...

After "startx", it says

Code:

Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(EE) Failed to load module "vesa" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

I hope I can get this old machine running.. some time...

i92guboj · 01-23-2010, 03:08 AM

You might need to install the X vesa driver. I am not familiar with debian lenny so I am not sure what the package name is. Maybe this one?

http://packages.debian.org/lenny/xse...org-video-vesa

racepres · 01-23-2010, 08:57 AM

Every thing you need to get going
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=20481
Worked for me "first Try"
HTh
RP