9.04 xorg badly broken

[Kevin O'Gorman]

Synopsis: I now know more about my system but the X server status has
not changed.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 4:13 PM, NoOp<glgxg at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On 07/06/2009 03:37 PM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>> Synopsis: packages are now up to date.
> ....
>>
>> Didn't need to do all that.  Retrying got dpkg to run clean and access
>> all sources and indexes.
>
> Excellent!
>> Still no xfix.
>
> See below - but probably not necessary since you can ssh -X into the
> machine now. Instead from a terminal:
>
> $ sudo /usr/share/recovery-mode/options/xfix

Okay, that made a new xorg.conf, and saved the old one as
xorg.conf.10090706162221
It behaves the same as the old one -- black screen.  I can also report
that even after a remote terminal has done "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" and
it reports stoppage, that Ctl-Alt-fkeys fail to work and I cannot get
a local login.

The new xorg.conf is like the default one and is almost empty.
Useless in this case.

>
> I was able to install
>> openssh-server and can log in with X forwarding from my laptop and run
>> things like synaptic, so things are going better.
>>
>> But there's still no X.
>
> Synaptic does come up? If so, then X is working, gdm probably isn't (or
> is crashing). Do you get any login screen now?

You misunderstand.  I can now run synaptic with X forwarding from
another computer that has a working X server.  X clients work, but not
on the local X server.

>
> You might try:
>
> $ sudo apt-get install --reinstall gdm
>
>>
>> ++ kevin
>>
>
> Trying to keep this all in one thread (Leonard...):
>
> You posted:
>> It's a bit different for me.  Pressing escape before grub starts does
>> nothing, maybe because there's no boot manager before grub.  I have it
>> on the MBR, and it's first in line.  But yes, I start the second
>> kernel, and it is recovery mode.  But the menu I get does not match
>> this description.  Instead I get a character-mode menu UI (looks sort
>> of graphical, but does not respond
>> to a mouse, just arrow keys), with 6 options:
>>   1 resume   Resume normal boot
>>   2 clean      Try to make free space
>>   3 dpkg       Repair broken packages
>>   4 fsck        File system check
>>   5 grub       Update grub bootloader
>>   6 netroot    Drop to root shell prompt with networking
>>
>> No xfix.
>
> Use the *down arrow* key. You should then see:
>
>   resume   Resume normal boot
>   clean      Try to make free space
>   dpkg       Repair broken packages
>   fsck        File system check
>   grub       Update grub bootloader
>   netroot    Drop to root shell prompt with networking
>   root       Drop to a root shell prompt
>   xfix       Try to auto repair graphic problems
>

Silly me.  It was there all along; I'm just out of the habit of
working with character-mode UI and didn't really notice the scroll
bar.
Still, I got there another way.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD