Can't start Xorg after upgrade to Debian Buster

Originally Posted by evo2 Hmm, but it wouldn't turn your second display on etc? You could only get that to work with the xorg.conf.

Of course. The rotation was done in .xinitrc, which I completely removed when I understood that Xorg doesn't start. The problems I described above were happening when there were no configuration files, neither xorg.conf, nor .xinitrc or anything else.

Hmm, that really makes me think you shouldn't need that xorg.conf. Just turning displays on and off, and positioning them with xrandr should be enough.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to turn displays on other than to put that 'Device' section in xorg.conf. Any ideas?

Hi,

you can use xrandr or a gui frontend to it like arandr.

Evo2.

You might try making one or the other display explicitly primary with xrandr.

Any chance your VGA cable could be replaced with a DVI-DVI or DVI-HDMI cable? My Haswell has HDMI, DVI and VGA. Going all digital can sometimes work better, or at all.

My xrandr script is in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/. No .xinitrc, .xsession, Gnome or GDM here. I have no trouble getting my Kaby Lake to use all connected displays without any need for xorg.conf* whether I use startx or TDM:

## to stack displays instead of side by side by side
# xrandr --output DP-1 --mode 2560x1440 --primary --output HDMI-1 --mode 2560x1080 --above DP-1 --output HDMI-2 --mode 1920x1200 --above HDMI-1
# xrandr | egrep 'onnect|creen|\*' | grep -v disconn | sort -r
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2560 x 3720, maximum 8192 x 8192
HDMI-2 connected 1920x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 519mm x 324mm
HDMI-1 connected 2560x1080+0+1200 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 673mm x 284mm
DP-1 connected primary 2560x1440+0+2280 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 598mm x 336mm
   2560x1440     59.95*+  74.92
   2560x1080     60.00*+
   1920x1200     59.95*+
# inxi -GxxS
System:    Host: gb250 Kernel: 4.19.0-5-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 Desktop: Trinity R14.0.7 tk: Qt 3.5.0
           wm: Twin dm: startx Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 630 vendor: Gigabyte driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:5912
           Display: tty server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
           resolution: 2560x1080~60Hz, 1920x1200~60Hz, 2560x1440~60Hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 630 (Kaby Lake GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 18.3.6 compat-v: 3.0
           direct render: Yes

Note HDMI-2 here is actually a DVI connection.

I would expect my Haswell to do no differently other than connector names in xrandr, but I don't have Buster on it.