[lug] X windows not starting

[Mark Horning]

"Michael J. Hammel" wrote:
> 
> Thus spoke Chad Wasinger
> > I have installed a fresh load of RH 7.1 and it cannot start x windows, it
> > boots to the login prompt and then the screen flashes. After a few minutes
> > of flahing it gives an error that " x ????????? suspended for 5 minutes,
> > trying to start to fast" I don't remember the exact error. Has anyone heard
> > of this?
> 
> The messages probably comes from init as it tries to spawn the X process.
> The X process starts and dies immediately, possibly because the driver you
> configured doesn't really work with your video setup (though that's a
> pretty wild guess).  The whole scenario is
> 
> 1. init starts X (aka "spawns the X process")
> 2. X dies
> 3. 1 & 2 repeat very quickly.
> 4. init notices that this spawning is happening too quickly and decides to
>    pause a bit, hoping this will allow time for other software to settle
>    down and give the X process a chance to start.
> 
> You'll want to boot into maintenence mode (init level 1, I think) and
> disable the gdm, kdm or xdm process (depending on if you're running gnome,
> kde or the default graphical login shell, repsectively) in /etc/inittab
> (just comment it out).  Then you can boot normally and try to fix the
> problem with the X driver.  The trick is how to boot into maintenence mode.
> I never remember how to do that, but I'm sure someone here will provide that
> piece of the puzzle.
> 

There should be some moments of 'quiet' between xdm trying to respawn
itself where init 1 will get you into single user mode. RedHat seems
to want to put xdm into the inittab as runlevel 5...doesn't make
any sense to me. Editing the default runlevel to 3 will allow you
to boot into a command prompt where it will be easier to troubleshoot
the X problem. Probably another run at xf86config or xconfigurator
will help.

-- 

Mark Horning
rip6 at rip6.net