Wow, today's updates really killed me

[Matt Philmon]

> Anyway, I can't run X at all. In fact, when it comes up and says "I cannot 
> start the X Server.... Would you like to view the X server output to diagnose 
> the problem?" It doesn't even let me hit yes or no before kicking up a login 
> prompt... doesn't even clear the error message screen so the login is coming 
> up on top of the error message. Heh. I have no idea what I broke. Only that a 
> cursory scan of the packages to be installed was quite large and included a 
> lot of X updates and libs. I don't suppose anyone has a suggestion? Anyone 
> else run the updates and gotten pretty much completely borked?

Ok... it seems there's several ways to deal with this so I'll answer my own question for any faced with a similar situation:
1) You can switch back to xfree86:
sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg
sudo apt-get install server-xfree86
2) You can reinstall the previous build (likely in your cache):
dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-org_6.8.1-1ubuntu6_i386.deb
3) You can remove the patch that killed xorg, rebuild, and reinstall:
sudo apt-get source xorg
cd xorg-6.8.1
sudo rm debian/patches/028_loader_speed_hack.diff
sudo fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage
--- wait a long time ---
install the built xserver-xorg package
4) ... and of course you can always wait for the patch(s) that will likely come pretty soon.



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: winmail.dat
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 3406 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20041219/26782719/attachment.bin>