last night I tried to add a line to my /etc/X11/xsession file to get kde to source .bash_profile at startup. I thought I aborted the changes, but after rebooting I can't start X. (Stupidly, I didn't make a backup first.) When I run startx from a command line, I get:

[...lots of lines seemingly ok stuff omitted...]

_FontTransSocketUNIXConnect: Can't connect: errno = 2
failed to set default font path 'unix/:-1'
Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'

XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.


Any suggestions on what to do? Is there a way to pull my initial XSession file from the Mandrake install CD? I'm also having a problem with a full swap file -- not sure if it's related or not.

-- TIA

the easiest way around this would be just to reconfigure X.

thanks trickykid

what does that involve? do I have to reinstall Mandrake? or is there a utility that will let me reconfigure X?

drakxconf or some such:

... should give you a list of the mandrake tools and one to do configuring should be fairly obvious.

well, I ran drakxconf as root, and it's kind of like a bad joke :-)

I enter the hardware information as reported by the M$ partition. I say "test". drakxconf helpfully says:
an error has occurred. try to change some parameters.
except when it helpfully says:
an error has occurred. a "display" subsection is required in each "screen" section.

The only way to get past the error loop is to cancel out of drakxconf -- pretty much no matter what I do to the parameters. If I don't test, I get a different Fatal I/O err when I startx.

Anyone know what I should do now? I'd hate to reinstall my whole OS because of this.

i'm on md80, and don't even have that file....

make sure you're using X version 4, not version 3. Always worth a shot i find.

I wrote loads abuot that on here somewhere today, go search :-) - if you need to of course.

Also, try configuring X with only the basic VGA adapter, if you haven't already

First of all, thanks to everyone who's offered suggestions. I'm really frustrated by how dead in the water I am, and how little I know about Linux.

Acid_kewpie, I did a search and didn't find specifics of how to check the version of X you're running. Any pointers? I assume it's the most recent, though, since I'm using Mandrake 8. But even using the basic VGA adapter in drakxconf gives me the same err msg.

My swap file is full. Could this actually be the problem with X not starting? The last error message I get says that it can't open the default font.

hmm...yeah, the full swap file had everything to do with it.

I cleared it out, reconfigured X one last time and now ... I have windows again.

Thanks again for everyone's suggestions -- at least I know about drakxconf now.

hi
i am getting this error ever time i log in to the linux

_fonttranssocketunixconnect:cantconnect: error=111
failed to set default font path unix/:7100
fatal server error:could not open default font 'fixed
X connection to :broken:0.0 (expicit kill or server shuddown

plz reply me as what should be done
regards
venkatesh

i have slackware 10
i875 chipset
nvidia fx 5600


i can't startX ,i installed nvidia driver and edited xorg.conf , but nothing happend ,
i still can't start x