Is Breezy (and/or X) really messed up right now?

volvoguy volvoguy at gmail.com
Wed May 25 02:59:31 UTC 2005


I expect problems when using the bleeding-edge software, but I've been
having some problems that I'm not sure are Ubuntu's "problems" or my
own.

I dual-boot Breezy and WinXP. I had left my machine in XP maybe a week
or so ago and when I got home, I had the xwindows "couldn't start
x.... will disable gdm for now.." error message on the screen. I don't
know much about troubleshooting X, but the log files made it look like
the server couldn't find the base xfonts. (sorry - one computer ATM,
don't have the file in front of me). I also couldn't get rid of the X
error message and couldn't switch to a different terminal. I had to
SSH in with my iBook. Thus far in my unstable Ubuntu playing, X has
only stopped working once and it was fixed within a few hours. I've
been daily booting into Breezy and apt-get update'ing and
dist-upgrading, but I haven't seen any progress yet. I noticed during
one apt-get session that the ubuntu-desktop package was removed. I
know it's a meta-package that *can* be removed, but I don't recall
seeing it happen from the developers end before. Let me know which (if
any) log files might help troubleshooting this.

On to the theory that the breakage was my fault. :-|

After I got the initial error message in Ubuntu and did my
apt-getting, I tried to reboot into windows only to find that it
wouldn't start either. It said I was missing a C++ Library DLL.
Running back and forth to my neighbors, I finally got the missing DLL
copied to my machine and XP booted fine - only for it to tell me that
software update had installed a critical patch and rebooted itself. As
we all know, Microsoft can break it's software pretty easily, but I
can't find any evidence that the update had anything to do with that
missing DLL.

Between these two scenarios, (I know, I'm jumping around. I'm blaming
it on the pain meds I'm on), I realized that I had left a live Linux
distro cd in my drive. It's a new one based on knoppix (aren't they
all? heh) called "symphony os". Now, while a live cd shouldn't have to
touch your hard discs, I have a feeling that this very alpha software
distro may have done just that. If that's the case though, I would
have thought it would mess with grub (which it didn't), totally kill
windows and probably mess up Ubuntu. If any of this turns out to be
probable, I'll also bring up the whole subject with the symphonyos
devs.

Now, after rambling on here for an hour (again with the pain meds, i
swear I can type 70 wpm), is there a package (or meta-package, or set
of packages) that I can try to install to get me back to a sane breezy
install without reformatting and starting from scratch? I can SSH in
remotely and back up my data (mostly my goofy yet unreleased SVG
backgrounds), but that's a major task to accomplish while trying to
stay conscious dealing with these meds and my back pain. grrr...  (can
someone ask Mark S. if he'll pay for a spine transplant surgery for
me?) :o)

Any thoughts on my twilight-zone-like Ubuntu symptoms would be greatly
appreciated!


-- 
Aaron

Ubuntu SVG Artwork - www.volvoguy.net/ubuntu
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