X config damaged by power failure

Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan at gmail.com
Wed Apr 30 20:37:55 UTC 2008


On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 16:08 -0400, Todd Denniston wrote:
> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote, On 04/30/2008 03:32 PM:
> > On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 16:16 +0000, g wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> of times that i have lost a file from power loss or lockup and hard reset, was
> >> because it was open. i would not think that x11 would hold a config file open
> >> when it only needs to read it. then again.
> >>
> >> had you made any changes to your x11 setup you should have at least had .old
> >> file.
> > 
> > I didn't have a previous xorg.conf file. That's the whole issue: X
> > worked perfectly well without it, until the power fail, then it didn't
> > work (until I ran system-config-display and created an xorg.conf file).
> > 
> 
> Unless the video equipment (card and monitor) have lost their minds, then the 
> xorg.conf probably still should not be needed.
> BTW to answer your earlier question, xorg can ask the card and monitor what 
> they support (assuming they are new enough), and this is why xorg.conf is not 
> needed IF you don't want to tweak the system to use less than the maximum 
> capability that the combination of the monitory and card support.
> 
> Does gdm come up and display correctly?
> if so I would suspect one of those Desktop Environments is tweaking with the 
> settings, and try creating a fresh new user and login as that user and see if 
> everything is OK.

Just to test, I moved the xorg.cong to one side and restarted X. This
time it worked correctly, so The Answer Must Remain a Mystery (cue
spooky music).

> On the UPS front, I would suggest checking[1] to see if some of the plugs on 
> the UPS are NOT battery backed and if the computer CPU happens to be plugged 
> into one of those. BTW I hope that printer is an inkjet...A laser on an UPS 
> will likely kill(destroy) the UPS's battery.
> 
> 
> [1] I know this is obvious, but I have missed it in the past.

What? You think I'm some kind of idiot? Of course I've checked this.
I'll just check again ... oh wait ...

I'll just go and stand in the corner now.

poc




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