X weirdness

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 28 March 2006 15:14, Sridhar M.A. wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 02:07:25PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>    > On Tuesday 28 March 2006 09:57, Sridhar M.A. wrote:
>    > > Hi,
>    > >
>    > > As mentioned sometime earlier, dapper installs on my
>    > > machine, but does not boot. Seems that the problem is with a
>    > > specific ASUS motherboard some of us are having.
>    > >
>    > > So, installed breezy and using dapper cd updated it. Even
>    > > pulled in the latest versions from the net. Still, the
>    > > latest kernel 2.6.15-9 does not boot. But, the one that is
>    > > shipped with breezy boots.
>    >
>    > Any error messages?
>
> Nothing that I can see. If you see the earlier thred under Dapper
> post-installation problem, I have detailed everything that has
> happened.

You seem to have a most unusual problem there, and you did a bunch of 
sensible things. It looks like one of those things that needs some 
heavy guns to solve. So here's how I would tackle it:

Get the .config for the current working Debian kernel, the last Ubuntu 
kernel that worked and the current Ubuntu kernel, and diff them. See 
if that highlights anything. Does Ubuntu boot using the Debian kernel 
btw? Then use the Debian .config to build a kernel under Ubuntu, test 
it, and check errors (if any). Any differences in the kernel 
parameters between working and non-working kernels?

>    > Check /var/log/Xorg.0.log and ~/.xsession-errors for error
>    > messages as to why X didn't start properly
>
> Here is ~/.xsession-errors :
>
> /etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: Registering your session with wtmp and
> utmp /etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: running: /usr/bin/sessreg -a -w
> /var/log/wtmp -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/lib/gdm/:0.Xservers" -h ""
> -l ":0" "mas"
> /etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
> /etc/gdm/Xsession: Executing default failed, will try to run
> x-terminal-emulator
> ALSA lib confmisc.c:672:(snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card '0'
> ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function
> snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
> ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
> ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function
> snd_func_concat returned error: No such device
> ALSA lib confmisc.c:1072:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
> ALSA lib conf.c:3493:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer
> returned error: No such device
> ALSA lib conf.c:3962:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such
> device ALSA lib pcm.c:2099:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM
> default
>
> This is tied to my comment of alsa not being started.
>
> Regarding /var/log/Xorg.log, the error message _seems_ to be :
>
>    error opening security policy file /etc/xserver/SecurityPolicy

Does that file exist, and what's in it? On my Breezy 
it's /etc/X11/xserver/SecurityPolicy - one extra dir in the path

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five