trying opensuse tumbleweed in virtualbox, xinit failed, commaand line only

Hello,

I am trying opensuse tumbleweed kde-live-1686 snapshop 20171102-media.iso in virtualbox. The error is:
You are in emergency mode. After loggin, type journalctl-xb to view system logs, systemctl reboot to reboot, systemctl default or ctrl D to boot into default mode.
Smbus base address uninitialized - upgrade bios or use force_addr=0 xaddr

And after trying to run startx:
xinit failed. /usr/bin/xorg is not setuid, maybe thats the reason? If so either use a display manager (strongly recommended) or adjust /etc/permissions.local and run "chkstat --system" afterwords.

I have a normal command line environment and can use yast2, etc., but no x windows. The install went normal. I am at a loss on how to proceed to trouble shoot problem.

A thought came to me about resources used. I chose the kde plasma desktop on the install. Maybe kde plama desktop is too much overhead to run tumbleweed? If so, can I revert to lxde in yast? I did it before on a box that was bogged down and installed lxde, but I had an x window environment to work with in that particular case.

I have tried the following without success:

typing 'pam-config --add --systemd' as root

and in the /etc/permissions.local file using the Vi editor removed the comment hash in front of the last line.

I also did a reinstall choosing the gnome desktop. It seems to be complaining about a permissions problem. Has startx been replaced with a different xwindow manager in the newer opensuse releases? I had a similar problem trying 13.2 a while back.

Whenever I bring up "startx" where an openSUSE dev is interested to respond, the claim is made that it is deprecated. Nevertheless I always get startx to work eventually, and without messing with pam. Traditionally the 'not setuid' message could be cleared with 'chmod 4711 /usr/binXorg', but it seems the 'not setuid' message is often a red herring since pam-config was implemented. If you can get 'WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/bin/icewm startx' to work, your problem could be that Gnome and KDE don't like your VM's "hardware", as IceWM is very lightweight, and included by default along with either Gnome or KDE.

'WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/bin/icewm startx' and 'WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/bin/startkde startx' are working for me in a normal installation of TW 20171109 on Intel hardware, while simply 'startx' starts KDE.

I have no xorg installed and would like to know if I can use zypper to add the repository and install xorg. Or I can do it in the command prompt yast utility. Is Download.opensuse.org/repositories/x11:/xorg/ the correct repository? I was unable to use windowmanager to run icewm.

zypper in patterns-openSUSE-x11 patterns-openSUSE-x11_opt

should be sufficient to enable IceWM to run (once it's installed) without need for any optional repo(s), but I'm not sure how to verify syntax validity, since I have those already installed. x11:/xorg is the development (next) version. It can be added with zypper if the devel version is what you really want. If you're trying to keep installation size to a minimum, you could probably get by with:

zypper in --no-recommends xorg-x11-driver-video xorg-x11-server xorg-x11-essentials xorg-x11-fonts-core icewm*

Without the --no-recommends switch, you'll obviously get more installed.

Text mode yast from cmdline is certainly an option, but its UI is a bit clumsy for package management.

I was able to use zypper and install xorg-x11-driver with no problems, however after a reboot and running windowmanager I get: /home/me/.serverauth.1680 does not exist. The .1680 after .serverauth increments up to a higher number after every time I run startx.

Does /home/me/ exist? If yes, is it owned by me?

ls -ld /home/me/

I have both the host opensuse and virtualbox opensuse shell output.

Host shell:
me@linux -> ls -ld
drwxr-xr-x 66 me users 4096 dec 7

Host shell root:
/usr/bin# ls -l Xorg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2162360 feb 20

Virtualbox opensuse shell:
me@localhost:-> ls ld
drwxr-xr-x 8 me users 258 dec 6

Virtualbox opensuse root shell:
localhost:/usr/bin# ls -l Xorg
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 2571124 nov 30 10:10 Xorg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 145676 oct 4 06:01 ls

I was reading about setuid and I am guessing that the s bit in the virtualbox Xorg is causing the problem and if I removed the s bit with 'chmod -s Xorg' that would fix the Xorg complaint when running startx? Also noticed the VM shell is localhost and not @linux.

In the days before systemd, 'chmod 4711 /usr/bin/Xorg' often used to solve this kind of problem. I haven't checked in quite a while if it still could. cf. /tail of /etc/permissions.local.

That said, I booted one machine that has two separate TW installations, one with IceWM and KDE3, the other with IceWM and Plasma. Startx starts the default session in each (KDE3 in one, Plasma in the other), with Xorg permissions set to -rwxr-xr-x in each, both with graphical.target as default, both booted with 3 on kernel cmdline, and logged in as either root or normal user.

Given all the trouble I've seen reported with SDDM, maybe if you were to remove it and replace it with KDM, KDM3 or LightDM, that change would fix whatever is broken or missing now. /home/me/.serverauth.#### sounds more like a missing dependency than anything else, like you did a minimal installation in the first place and and Xorg dependencies simply aren't complete yet. 'zypper ve' might be your solution.

"Reverting to LXDE" would be overkill. Unless you are disk space limited, there's no reason to have only Plasma or LXDE. Either can be added after whatever is previously installed.

I ran 'zypper ve' and the status report was all package dependencies were up to date and I then ran startx with the same error failed to start x server. Next, I ran 'chmod 4711' startx with the same error again. This time I took a screen shot of the log file from the vi editor and have attached it. It is viewable in ocular. When I installed tumbleweed in virtualbox I first opted for the kde install and the second time I opted for the gnome install and let the installer pick the packages. I used an iso image file to run the installation from.

Since my last post, I used zypper to install lxde, then kde with the same result. This virtual install of tumbleweed was a web install, so I plan to do a full dvd iso image to install from and will post my results.

The dvd image install worked. It booted to a kde desktop. I learned a lot about trouble shooting a linux system. Thank you for the support.