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Re: help... X-Server crashed after update



Sorry it took so long to get back to this issue...  I'm still working on it and haven't resorted to killing the machine and  going back to square one with a re-install (which would be when I am ready to throw in the towel, and I'm not there yet).

I made a backup image of the primary HDA1 system drive; so I should be able to restore it to a different drive if I need to.

I added comments in the thread below:

At 02:53 AM 4/17/2009 -0400, you wrote:
Laszlo Acs wrote:
Sure seems to be alot of empty font dirs...  and, not only that...  all 100dpi and 75dpi font sets are empty AFTER reinstall!???!!!

Yup, something is definitely up.  Do a "dpkg --listfiles xfonts-75dpi" and see if the font files are in the package, and then a "ls /usr/share/fonts/X11/{75,100}dpi" to see if they actually got on the system.

When I examine the various folders in /usr/share/fonts/X11/{75,100}dpi - there are 366 gz'd font files having a date of 10/24/2007.  The dpkg --listfiles matches the files in the directories...

Don't want to be insulting, but... you did check that you're not out of disk space?  Just a thought.

when I run "$ df /", I get:
Filesystem     1k-blocks      Used      Available          Use%   Mounted on
/dev/hda1       18421552     6007020     11478748       35%     /
varrun        1038224       140  1038084            1%     /var/run
varlock         1038224         4        1038220            1%     /var/lock
udev                1038224         116  1038108            1%     /dev
devshm           1038224           0      1038224        0%     /dev/shm
lrm              1038224       18856      1019368        2%     /lib/modules/2.6.15-53-386/volatile
/dev/md2       576917472   422406064    125205684       78%     /data

Seems like I should have plenty of system diskspace with only 35% of the primary in use...  (the 78% usage is on the non-boot RAID - this fluctuates on average of 70%-to-80% regularly based on internal processes - so the value is within my norms)


so, just for grins, I try
  $ startx
and crash with the same errors - same missing "fixed" font
Then, I looked up the 'xorg ati' driver Jeff suggested I try...  and found it's embedded within the xserver-xorg-video-ati and xserver-xorg-driver-ati packages.  So...

If you're getting to the message about fonts, chances are that X is finding *some* kind of driver.  It should report which driver in the Xorg log.  The proprietary X driver is "fglrx", and the free drivers are "ati", "r128", or "radeon".

I am running the free "radeon" driver.

My guess is that you need to fix the font issue first.

OK...  so, if I seem to already have the fonts in the /usr/share/fonts/X11/{75,100}dpi dirs, why is the XServer not registering its presence?

Anyway, I decided to try using the old aptitude quasi-GUI tool - and it shows that there are 2 broken packages.  I do the CTRL-T and navigate to the resolver to do an "Examine" - and it shows that xfonts-encodings is scheduled for deletion and breaks xfonts-utils and another conf file.  I undid that and now nothing shows up as broken - but still I have a broken X ("startx" still can't find "fixed" font). 

I bet there's something simple I'm not seeing and am getting confused by things that aren't 'really' broken but just are appearing to be.  For example, when I reboot and CTRL-F1 to a TTY screen, then login - I get a message "configuration error - unknown item 'FAIL_DELAY' (notify administrator)" - I yell at my screen that I am the freaking administrator but it doesn't care...  so I type in my password and move on...  but, again, I don't know what else I should be trying now.

Laz