X doesn't start

[Beartooth]

On Mon, 26 May 2008 17:18:13 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:

> On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 18:18 +0000, Beartooth wrote:

>> 	pgrep -fl X as user just puts me back to my prompt. As root, it
>> does the same.
> 
> That's what it's supposed to do. If it didn't give you any other
> feedback, then you aren't running X.

	OK, fine by me. 

>> 	Not knowing from console (I can't exactly open a gnome-terminal
>> at the moment), I tried it as root from the one command line I have.
> 
> That's a console in Unix-speak.

	I kinda had a sneakin' hunch it might be.

>> It
>> hit a cupsd error, saying it lacked libldap-2.3.so.0, went on, and
>> seemed to hang on starting anacron.
>> 
>> 	I killed it with ^C, did init 3 alone (which also seemed to hang
>> on anacron) and did init 5.
> 
> It only appears to hang because most of the output is coming from
> various other processes as they start or finish. If you hit Enter you
> should get a Shell prompt.

	Aha. I figured, from its completing the next time, that it must 
be way slow. (It isn't usually.) But I didn't know about hitting enter.

>> 	That did more stuff, of course, still hit the cupsd error, and
>> also set out to start anacron. This time I let it go, and went for a
>> shower (about 1/2 hour). It got past anacron, saying OK; set network
>> parameters, and started the NetworkManager daemon, calling both those
>> OK -- and that's where it still is.
> 
> Did any of this happen on a graphical screen, or is it all on the same
> white-on-black text console as before? In the normal boot sequence the
> startup screen goes graphical (i.e. a few colours and a progress bar)
> fairly early in the process.

	All strictly white on black. I normally wait for the graphical 
login.

>> > If it still doesn't work, check for errors (lines marked EE) in
>> > /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
>> 
>> 	That found two. The first says "Unable to locate/open config
>> file." The second gets more specific: "Failed to load module
>> "pcidata"(module does not exist, 0)"
> 
> The first one if OK, it's just saying you don't have a config file,
> which you know since you moved it. The second one may or may not be a
> real problem but I'm afraid my X knowledge doesn't cover it except that
> a non-existent module might imply an incomplete installation. My own
> Xorg.0.log file has no reference to pcidata (I only have an onboard
> Intel 965 chipset).

	Meseems I've seen some such message among boot-ups somewhere 
before, and had booting complete successfully into X ...

	Incidentally, in case you haven't noticed, I've also been trying 
things on this problem with Matthew Saltzman in the thread "Weirdness 
with Fedora/XP upgrade." And I did manage to scp something very close to 
all the files I wanted, from the troubled #1 machine into this #2 one, 
while #1 was online. So I have a lifeline.

	As I told him, I'll gladly keep this up so long as either of you, 
or any other clearly knowledgeable person here thinks it worth while. 
Hey, we might uncover the anaconda bug! 

	But if the worse comes to the worst, I'm confident I can now live 
with the results of wiping the hard drive and re-installing F8 from 
scratch.

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
Remember I know precious little of what I am talking about.