noob help - lost desktop after kernel and other updates
 

Help please!! I am using suse 10. It has worked fine for months but I thought I ought to update (silly me I suppose).

Anyway I used yast to update - I know it updated the kernel as well as a load of programs. Now I have lost pretty well everything. On boot up I just get a black screen with, would you believe, skype fired up but nothing else. No side bars, menus nothing. I have to manually turn off to reboot.

I have tried firing up failsafe - it gets me to the login and I can log on OK. But if I type startx it takes me to the same bad screen with just skype open.

Can anyone help - even if you could help me to uninstall the updates (is this possible - a la Win XP)?

TIA

Richard

Sounds like a problem with X. Can you log on as root and type

sax2 -r

this should re-set your X config and allow you to startx

dth1

Thanks for responding so quickly. Unfortunately, I ran sax2 -r under root as you suggested. I accepted its recommended default but it sent me to the same black screen with, this time, just a dialogue box from (I think) powersaver or some such program saying something to the effect that "powersaver is not running - performance will be better if it was" - no idea what this is as i don't use any powersaver (this is a desktop). Anyway - clicking on OK - the only option - just returns me to a blank screen.

I'll log on again as root and have a look at the xorg.conf file (I might get that far!) and see if it suggests anything corrupt.

Ta anyway

PS - haven't got access to another linux box at the moment and have forgotten the normal location of the xorg.conf - can you help??

EDIT: found the file - now searching for an editor!!

OK - I have checked and amended the xorg.conf file and ensured there are no errors in Xorg.0.log.

However, startx will still not fire up. I don't get any error messages - just a blank grey screen. It first shows the nvidia splash, then the blue screen with the three Suse symbols - tools, desktop and kde? Then goes to grey only and locks up. I have to CNTRL-DEL-BACKSPACE to recover.

Can anyone help me to "roll-back" the updates I did if possible.

If not possible, can I revert to a previous kernel to see if that is the issue? The updated kernel is 2.6.13-15.10

ANY HELP APPRECIATED.

RJ

Can you fire-up any of the potential graphical login-managers?
What was your desktop environment?


Cheers,
Tink

Tinkster - thanks for taking the time to reply.

I am using KDE. As to your other point re graphical managers - I'm only a newbie at linux - presumably you mean Gnome or something? I don't think I have gnome installed but maybe I do or have one of the other lightweight ones available.

Can you help with the command line instruction to run one of them? BTW I did try "kde start" as a guess but it returns "cannot connect to X server".

Any help you can give would be MUCH appreciated. I hate using my Win xp notebook:cry:

RJ

BTW - as an extra bit of info: when I use startx it gets to the blue KDE screen with the three icons (see post above). But I notice that during the boot sequence when the "desktop" icon is highlighted - there is a loud squawk from the PC's speaker. So there must be something it doesn't like. Is there another log file I could look at (other than xorg.0.log)?

Tinkster - OK - I found that I have twm and can boot succesfully using that.

However, no idea how to USE it.:scratch: I can right click to get a short menu and a terminal. That's about it. It definitely seems to me that it is KDE that is corrupted. I was using (I think) 3.4.2 - would that be right?

Is there someway I can reinstall KDE from a command line? I have got and can use apt?

RJ

EDIT: OK I have found something called fvwm which has given me a desktop I can actually figure out. I'll go look at kde and see what might be up!

Chances are it's just a stuffed-up KDE setting ...

To test that it's your user and not the whole of KDE, create another user-account
as root (useradd -m -s /bin/bash -d /home/test test), give him a password (passwd test),
log out from root, log in as test and see how KDE does.


If it's all right, you should be able to pretty much just remove ~/.kde for your
NORMAL user account (caution - if you use KMail or other things that take considerable
effort to configure make sure to copy your settings).



Cheers,
Tink