X Windows Crashes and Loops on startup

hitman_et · 12-05-2004, 07:37 PM

When i boot up the computer it all goes fine until i get to the loading of X windows, it shows the nvidia splash screen and then crashes back to the terminal for about 2 seconds then it repeats the process.

is there anyway to get it to boot straight to terminal (command line) without the access to x windows.(maybe editing the inittab file from c/l if it can be done)

also for that brief 2 seconds between attempting to load i can type about 5 letters

Tinkster · 12-05-2004, 08:20 PM

On your bootloaders prompt add single as a parameter
to your kernel ...

Cheers,
Tink

hitman_et · 12-05-2004, 08:48 PM

yeah ok i think i did that but when i try to startx it says command not found, is there a comman line file editor (i want to edit inittab)

EDIT: is ed or red a good one to use?

Tinkster · 12-05-2004, 08:55 PM

I've never heard of red, and never used ed ...
I suggest trying vi, emacs or nano (pico) if
you're familiar with either of them .... if none
of those means anything to you I'd recommend
nano (pico) ...

Editing inittab won't give you a startx, btw ...

Cheers,
Tink

hitman_et · 12-05-2004, 08:58 PM

i was gonna try and get it to start up onto command line the normal way...will that give me startx. or do u knwo a better way
thx

hitman_et · 12-05-2004, 09:16 PM

ok i got it to boot into c/l. now for the X Windows problem..

in the log it says

Code:

Could not init font path element unix/:7100, removing from list!

Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'

any ideas on how to fix that??

thx

Tinkster · 12-05-2004, 11:56 PM

By installing the font?

Cheers,
Tink

hitman_et · 12-06-2004, 02:00 AM

um how do i do get the fonts onto the computer

EDIT: wat exactly is "unix/:7100" i checked the rgb.txt file and it was there and it looked normal. can i del the unix/:7100 line out of the XF86config file. the line is "Font Path:"unis/:7100""

jeffreybluml · 12-06-2004, 05:56 AM

There 's a really goo d chance you're out of disk space. Either that, or your nvidia criver broke (happened to me more than once).

Check your disk space with the command

df

and I'll bet it's close to full.

I have seen that font error in my logs many times, and I think I got it to go away by commenting out that line in /etc/X11/XFree86Config. DOnlt think that helped the boot problem though, but as I said that's likely disk space...

Let us know...

hitman_et · 12-06-2004, 05:51 PM

/dev/hda2 114239496 13325080 95111340 13% /
/dev/hda1 101089 9324 86546 10%

i take it that means 13 and 10% full

yeha i commented that out, but do i need it for anything

jeffreybluml · 12-07-2004, 06:16 AM

Bummer, I was sure it was the disk space.

I have yet to find that I needed that line in XFree86Config. DOn't know what it means, but mine has been commented out for some time now and I've been fine.

Um, I guess you should look for any other errors in /var/log/messages that are occuring when it's looping. Post a larger portion of it here and we can help you look through it...

I'll keep checking in...