[K12OSN] sudden appearance of grey X

[Les Mikesell]

Julius Szelagiewicz wrote:

>>> Jim, tried it very thoroughly (this is my usual sequence of testing when I
>>> get the grey X). This time, no joy - everything seems hunky-dory. Tried
>>> with iptables off as well, same.
>>> julius
>>>
> SERVER set ok, interface addresses unchanged. The nice? thing is that it
> isn't just terminals - vncviewer localhost also gets grey screen. xdcmp
> shows in netstat just as it should
> 	the phone calls are driving me nuts - 3 deep at the counter
> without computers. i shoud fire me.
> julius

Do you know if the desktop came up on the console?  It sounds like you 
might be in runlevel 3 instead of 5 on the server.  You might find 
something in the servers /var/log/Xorg.0.log if it is trying to start 
and failing there too.  The fact that vnc won't start a session makes me 
think this is something on the server side but I'm not sure how to tell 
remotely if it is at the basic X level or in the window manager startup.
You might also look through /var/log/messages and the output of dmesg on 
the server to see if you are getting disk errors - it could be failing 
to load some needed file due to a hardware problem.

Time to work a spare server into the budget for next year...  This stuff 
doesn't fail often but when it does the best quick fix is another one 
that already works.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com