So I have been using slax for quite sometime, but alas have been on an outdated kernel. I tried to just clean install 12.0 w/ the 2.6.21 kernel I believe. Everything is ok for the most part, but I can't startx. Upon execution of startx I get

(==) LOG File:/var/log/Xorg.0.log
(==) Using config file "/etc/X11/Xorg.conf"
II Module already built in
II Module already built in
(EE)VIA (0) No valid modes found
(EE) Screen(s) found but none have usable configuration

Fatal Server error:
no screens found
giving up

xinit: connection reset by peer (errorno 104)
unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errorno 3): server error



Sorry I had to type that in manually because my nix is on a seperate partition. I get the same error with the backtrack live cd btw. I have an averatec laptop that is kinda old, but always worked fine with slack 10. For the record I installed Suse 10.3 and it had no problems. Maybe I will try to update everything but the x pkgs.

any help appreciated.

ok this is stupid replying to myself, but perhaps if someone has the same problem this will help.

First I tried editing the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to no avail. I then wanted to see what exactly startx was calling and having problems with. I just wanted to get a different error message than the above. I did
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.old
cp xorg.conf-vesa xorg.conf

I then got some different error which I don't recall but the key was it was different. Next I did the same w/ the xorg.conf-fbdev and startx ran fine except for taking a couple of seconds longer than would have liked, but now I can edit it down.

maybe this will help someone

I got this error the other day and had to add a modeline to the Monitor section to fix it.

I've no idea if that's your problem - can you post your xorg.conf, or at least the relevant bits of it?

Xorg -configure

Autoprobes and generates a working xorg.conf.% to test and edit.

X -config %what.Xorg.says.it.is

Should give you a blank screen with an X cursor. If it work cp the new xorg.conf.% to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

I've always used the above to set up Xorg. Never had it fail with nvidia, ati, and intel chipsets, maybe worth a try.

Other possible xorg.conf setup tools are `xorgconfig` (my favourite) and `xorgsetup`. You need significant knowledge of your hardware if you use `xorgconfig`, but it should almost never fail if you provide the correct information. `xorgsetup`, on the other hand, requires no knowledge of the hardware, but may produce an unusable xorg.conf sometimes (it tries to guess the correct values depending on the hardware it detects).