On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Richard Balthazor wrote:
>I'd be grateful for any suggestions on the following strange (to me)
>behaviour. I am running RH7.3, XFree 4.2.0, with an ATI Mach64 card with a
>visible 1Mb of onboard RAM and a Sun0587 monitor.
>
>I boot into text mode (init 3) and run Xconfigurator, selecting all the
>defaults/probed values, and a resolution that is known to work (800x600,
>16-bit). I can see the 'can you see this message?', and allow it to write
>the XF86Config-4 files. Then I 'startx', and all appears fine as Gnome
>appears. I save the /var/adm/XFree86.9.log file (calling it
>/var/adm/XFree86.9.log.successful) and delete the original.
>
>Then I run Xconfigurator again (from a terminal window in Gnome), again
>selecting exactly the same values. This time, however, instead of the
>'can you see this message?' I get the grey screen of doom, and have to
>Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to get back to Gnome. /However/ it *has* successfully
>written the XF86Config-4 file. I save the /var/adm/XFree86.{0,9}.log
>files as .unsuccessful.
>
>The differences between XFree86.9.log.successful and .unsuccessful are:
>("<" indicating the earlier, successful attempt from text mode, ">" the
>later, unsuccessful attempt from Gnome.
>
>< (==) Log file: "/var/log/XFree86.9.log", Time: Tue Jul 16 10:04:44 2002
>---
>> (==) Log file: "/var/log/XFree86.9.log", Time: Tue Jul 16 10:06:09 2002
>29c29
>< (--) using VT number 7
>---
>> (--) using VT number 8
You've got two copies of X running. One on VT 7 and one on VT 8.
The second server was started while a first was still running.
Or else something else is using the tty.
>53c53
>< (II) PCI: stages = 0x03, oldVal1 = 0x8000003c, mode1Res1 = 0x80000000
>---
>> (II) PCI: stages = 0x03, oldVal1 = 0x00000000, mode1Res1 = 0x80000000
>515a516
Weird.
>At the end of the XFree86.0.log.unsuccessful file are the lines:
>
>AUDIT: Tue Jul 16 10:05:30 2002: 1295 X: client 6 rejected from local host
>(WW) Open APM failed (/dev/apm_bios) (No such device)
WW == warning. If you're trying to get APM working, it is
warning you that it is not working. If you're not trying to do
that, it is meaningless.
>So I start again, booting into text mode, and this time repeat the
>experiment but this time instead of starting X with 'startx', I go for the
>brute force 'xinit' (with no arguments). This time, Xconfigurator
>completes the second time just fine, and I see the 'Can you see this
>message?' screen.
I don't understand.. You're running Xconfigurator inside X? If
so, don't. Xconfigurator is explicitly not meant to be ran in X.
It only works in remote scenarios to configure a remote server.
Running it locally inside X may or may not work, but it can
definitely can cause problems, and it is not intended to work in
this manner. Xconfigurator should always be ran from the text
mode console outside of X, and preferably, no X server should be
running at the time. Running Xconfigurator inside X is
undefined and unsupported behaviour. Any crash resulting is not
considered a bug.
--
Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address:
OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie,
XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3
Red Hat Inc.
http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
