From: Stephen Powell on
On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:24:26 -0400 (EDT), Peter Easthope wrote:
> "Stephen Powell" <zlinuxman.(a)wowway.co.> wrote:
>> Please consider a reinstall first.
>
> Done, using the Squeeze Alpha1 installer CD snagged at 2010-05-27.
> Keeping the home partition intact is a helpful capability.
> Thanks, but see following.
>
> The monitor complaining about the undefined video mode
> gave no display at all on another machine. The NetVista
> now has a working monitor. One problem solved.

My guess is that this problem was solved by a newer
driver which got installed with the fresh install.
>
> X still failed with these being the last lines to the screen.
> waiting for X server to shut down ...error setting MTRR (base = 0xf8000000, size
> = 0x09000000, type = 1) Inappropriate ioctl for device (25)
>
> While blundering yesterday evening I realized that X
> works for root! Made a new test account and X works
> there also.
>
> I began removing ~/.* files and retrying startx. The
> last two removed were .Xauthority and .xinitrc.
> X then worked. X was broken before .xinitrc was added
> and .xinitrc now contained only comments. So .Xauthority
> appears to have disabled X.

I figured it had something to do with one of those .x* files.
>
> As I understand, hidden configuration files were invented
> in the days of teletype machines to make the output of
> ls tolerable. Now there are hidden directories with
> dozens of hidden files in total. I can't help but wonder
> about the wisdom. A hidden file disabling X with no
> indication in Xorg.0.log seems bad.

To quote chief engineer Montgomery Scott from the movie
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,

"The more they over-tink the plumbing, the easier it is to
stop up the drain."

More complexity means more things can go wrong.
>
> Thanks for the help Stephen,

You're welcome. I'm glad you finally got it working.

--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-


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