9.04 xorg badly broken

[Kevin O'Gorman]

Synopsis:
This helped to the extent that I have more up-to-date packages,
although some indexes are still not loaded.
I could not follow all of the suggestions ("xfix" does not exist).
The screen is still black.

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 12:44 PM, NoOp<glgxg at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On 07/04/2009 09:45 AM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>> I have two systems that I upgraded to 9.04, and the x system is
>> completely broken on one, and unsatisfactory on the other.
>
> What did you upgrade from? Hopefully Intrepid. This shows from 8.04:
> http://pastebin.ca/1483892 did you try to upgrade directly from 8.04 to
> 9.04? If so you will indeed have issues - see:
> http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading
>  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes
>
> If that's the case, then download a copy of the 9.04 liveCD & I'll see
> if I can help you recover.

That xorg.conf shows 8.04 because that's the starting point.  I tried
upgrading 8.04 -> 8.10 -> 9.04 and it failed miserably because the
9.04 live CD could not get a video mode high enough resolution to be
usable -- limit was 600x800.  Thus I used the alternative install CD
and did a fresh install to a new partition.  The resulting X was
useless, so I imported the xorg.conf from the original root partition,
which was also pretty useless.

>
>>
>> Here's the scoop on the broken one.  Bottom line, X never really
>> starts, but it apparently does not know this, because I'm just faced
>> with a black screen and an unresponsive system.  Since the install
>> never finished (I couldn't use the live disk, and the alternative ISO
>> only allows fresh installs), I don't have tools to log into the system
>> over the network.
>
> Alternate CD will indeed allow you to fix an install. It can get a bit
> complicated, but you can install/reinstall with the alternate cd.
> However, you state that the install never finished; is that 'upgrade'
> never finished, or 'install' never finished?
>

Neither one, really.  The 8.10 -> 9.04 never really started because of
video problems.  Install resulted in broken X, so it doesn't count as
finished either, and as a result it doesn't have the right package
sources yet and is quite limited in software.

>  There's probably a way to do that from the command
>> line, but I don't know how.
>>
>> Details: [ snipped ]
>
> Boot to recovery mode, select dpkg and repair any broken packages. Once
> finished, run xfix. Then resume.

Oh.  I see dpkg is fixing the package sources.  It's upgrading 151 packages.
Not all indexes could be loaded -- it failed to resolve the names
us.archive.ubuntu.com and security.ubuntu.com; I don't know what this
makes me miss.

There does not appear to be anything named 'xfix' on the rescue menu,
nor a man page by that name, nor does synaptic on my 9.04 at work know
about xfix.  There are some xfixes* libraries, but no hint about how
or when they are used.

Resuming gives me the black screen I was getting before.  I have to
reset now (ctl-alt-delete doesn't even work).  I'll try the xorg.conf
tweaks mentioned below...

>
> Also:
> Something doesn't appear correct in your xorg.conf:
> #
> Section "Screen"
> #
>        Identifier "Screen0"
> #
>        Device     "Card0"
> #
>        Monitor    "Monitor0"
> #
>        SubSection "Display"
> #
>                Viewport   0 0
> #
>                Depth     1
> #
>        EndSubSection
> #
>        SubSection "Display"
> #
>                Viewport   0 0
> #
>                Depth     4
> #
>        EndSubSection
> #
>        SubSection "Display"
> #
>                Viewport   0 0
> #
>                Depth     8
> #
>        EndSubSection
> #
>        SubSection "Display"
> #
>                Viewport   0 0
> #
>                Depth     15
> #
>        EndSubSection
> #
>        SubSection "Display"
> #
>                Viewport   0 0
> #
>                Depth     16
> #
>        EndSubSection
> #
>        SubSection "Display"
> #
>                Viewport   0 0
> #
>                Depth     24
> #
>        EndSubSection
>
> That section should contain something along the lines of:
> Section "Screen"
>    Identifier     "Screen0"
>    Device         "Device0"
>    Monitor        "Monitor0"
>    DefaultDepth    24
>    Option         "TwinView" "0"
>    Option         "metamodes" "1280x1024 +0+0"
>    Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
>    SubSection     "Display"
>        Depth       24
>    EndSubSection
>
> For a hard configured screen. Note: that's for mine, so yours will be
> different. Or:
>
> Section "Screen"
>    Identifier     "Default Screen"
>    Device         "Configured video device"
>    Monitor        "Configured monitor"
> EndSection
>
> for a default xorg.conf on 9.04.

The default xorg seems to be an empty xorg.conf.  I'm using the one
that I got from "Xorg -configure" and I'm not sure what you'd want to
change.

>
> What happens if you boot into recovery mode and run xfix?

No can do.  No such animal, as mentioned above.


-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD