What is the proper way to reconfigure X if it fails

[KimTjik]

I hope I'm not annoying, but I decided to "bother" this forum with "all" questions I'm not able to find any answer to. I'm not always like  but sometimes!

Twice when doing some testing, to see how the system reacts, I've encountered X-server failures. Since changing monitor or something like that is a quite normal procedure I'm puzzled to how a recovery is solved in Pardus.

While installing Pardus a zorg script is used, right? And the service zorg is continuously used for configuration of Xorg? So what do you do if X fails? Are there any guidelines for how to rerun the zorg script? I wonder because the usual modifications of xorg.conf do squat; I've already tested several times with the exact right settings, but X still fails with a bunch of errors about non existing paths. I've changed and stopped and restarted zorg and so forth unfortunately without success or any hint about how to do this.

Since the developers of Pardus have chosen an unorthodox approach I tend to believe there's some useful documentation about this. Maybe it's just difficult to find it in English.

It's probably very simple and just me being stupid!

[benvdh]

Hey,

I don't really know how this problem is solved in pardus, but what I usually do when I have problems getting X to run is looking at the /var/log/Xorg.0.log. Usually I find the error there and most of the time the error messages there are quite readable (as in being able to understand what they mean). Then I always try to correct what's wrong in xorg.conf. Another possibility is that you just create a backup of your xorg.conf when X is running and you are planning to experiment with X. If something goes wrong you can always track down the differences between the backup and the new file using the diff command. And of course change the settings so everything works again.

Regards,

Ben

ps. If you still want to know how the pardus dev's solved it you could always try to contact them using the irc channel or through the personal messaging system on the site.

[DANHO]

Are you refering to when X fails it kicks you into text modus due to graphical errors?

[KimTjik]

Yep, I'm talking about when X fails. I'm not lost when I'm working with Slackware, Arch and Fedora, but I've had a hard time figuring out why I can't recover Pardus in the same basic manner (probably also related to the fact that Pardus use KDE). Anyway the advantages with for example Arch is that you have full control over what you're doing; in Pardus I didn't so now I'm trying to figure out how it's designed.

I haven't solved the issue yet (I installed Fedora 64bit and haven't taken time to work on the Pardus installation any further), but I got this response which basically answers my question:

http://worldforum.pardus-linux.nl/index.php/topic,1114.msg4549.html#msg4549

Thanks for your responses!

[DANHO]

I agree with you in properly running an os you have full control over at all times. I lack that full control from plain ignorance of unix. Learning to configure sli twin video cards on suse and the Cat had cause me some tribulance(reinst) in the past. But here, this might not be the proper way but a sure way to recover X. 

In my case; No graphics in text modus with a live connection.

I keep Nvidia driver(NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run) tar file (not installed) somewhere in /etc/.

Since I dont use or have  the (ndiswrapper-domo package)installed, when i run sh command it will fire pisi to start loading ndiswrapper-domo package and the newly driver i keep in /etc/....(NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg1.run)..... reconfiguring xorg file to bootable graphical state of feline power.

In other words, When I install (sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-100.14.11-pkg.run), pisi automatically turns on to install and configure (ndiswrapper-domo package) reconfiguring xorg.conf as the 100.14.11-pkg driver depends on ndiswrapper for support.

Good luck.