move from stable to testing broke X-Windows

[zeroth404]

Yesterday I attempted to move from debian stable to testing, so I changed all the directories in /etc/apt/sources.list from stable to testing. I just changed the words "stable" "to "testing" hoping that would work.

I then updated all the packages that aptitude claimed were upgradable, and had to sacrifice using K3B because some library it required conflicted with ALSA. Anyway, the bottom line is that now X-Windows wont start. I get dropped to a text-based login after boot.

My question is this: It seems that XFree is generally used in Debian, but I'm used to Xorg and after reading up on the subject I've determined that Xorg is superior. If I remove all the X-Windows packages as well as any XFree packages and then reinstall X-Windows with Xorg packages, would that work?

edit: testing has only wine 9.1 and firefox 1.0.7. stable was stuck in VERY old version of each. does the unstable tree usually have very up to date stuff?

[dafl00]

...
edit: testing has only wine 9.1 and firefox 1.0.7. stable was stuck in VERY old version of each. does the unstable tree usually have very up to date stuff?

http://www.togaware.com/linux/surviv...Releases.shtml

when you log back into debian try

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

or

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

[zeroth404]

I ran config-base thinking that I could reset my desktop manager or something but that iddnt help, not to mention that it doesn't give you the option.

In the process I moves from testing to unstable, thinking that unstable was more "stable" than testing, only to find that its not..which I'm not concerned about.

anyway, I realized that x-windows wasn't completely installed somehow from moving from stable to testing to unstable, so I installed x-windows-system-core.

I then ran dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and now I can get into X windows.

however, I have no desktop manager. I'll google around to see how to change that.

thanks for the reply, I'd be lost without it

[zeroth404]

I was mistaken when I said I had no desktop manager. For some reason none started up when I ran startx, but after I rebooted everything worked great.

though now I have this mysterious "\A#@" directory on my root partition, however the A is some other ASCII character that has a tilde over it (I'm not sure how to type that) with a file in it named "xdmctl" within it. when I attempt to cat the file, nothign happens, it just sits there until I hit ctrl+c. its permissions are prw--w---- ....

its probably nothing, but I'm still curious as to why its there in the first place.

[dafl00]

the p means that it's a FIFO file
if it exists it means either that a program/script may be using it or it was never removed

as of right now i can't think of a way to check what program is accesing the file

[farslayer]

If you are curious which packages ae in which Branches of Debian, you can get a quick reference at Distrowatch..

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian

Program version   Unstable  | Testing   | Stable
----------------------------------------------
linux (2.6.15.1)    2.6.15   |  2.6.12  | 2.4.27
k3b (0.12.10)     0.12.10    |     --   | 0.11.20
xorg (7.0)            6.9.0  |   6.8.2  |    --
libgnome (2.12.0.1) 2.12.0.1 |  2.10.1  | 2.8.1
kdebase (3.5.0)      3.5     |   3.4.3  | 3.3.2
firefox (1.5)      1.5.dfsg  |   1.0.7  | 1.0.4

you get the idea..


lsof - List Open Files - a utility to show you what programs have which files open..

The command FiFos
-----------------
This is a feature you can use to remote-control KDM. It's mostly intended
for use by ksmserver and kdesktop from a running session, but other
applications are possible as well.
There are two types of FiFos: the global one (xdmctl) and the per-display ones (xdmctl-<display>).
The global one is owned by root, the per-display ones are owned by the user
currently owning the session (root or the logged in user). Group ownership
of the FiFos can be set via FifoGroup=, otherwise it's root. The file
permissions of the FiFos are rw--w---- (0620). The FiFos are created in the
directory specified by FifoDir=.

maybe that will helkpl shed a little light on the xdmctl file for ya.. are you running kdm ?

[zeroth404]

If you are curious which packages ae in which Branches of Debian, you can get a quick reference at Distrowatch..

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian

Program version   Unstable  | Testing   | Stable
----------------------------------------------
linux (2.6.15.1)    2.6.15   |  2.6.12  | 2.4.27
k3b (0.12.10)     0.12.10    |     --   | 0.11.20
xorg (7.0)            6.9.0  |   6.8.2  |    --
libgnome (2.12.0.1) 2.12.0.1 |  2.10.1  | 2.8.1
kdebase (3.5.0)      3.5     |   3.4.3  | 3.3.2
firefox (1.5)      1.5.dfsg  |   1.0.7  | 1.0.4

you get the idea..


lsof - List Open Files - a utility to show you what programs have which files open..



maybe that will helkpl shed a little light on the xdmctl file for ya.. are you running kdm ?

Yes, I'm running KDM. I think it may have been a problem with some changes I made to fstab. I had previously configured security settings in my fstab in slackware, such as most of my partiitions (/var, /home, etc) had 'nodev' option set, some had 'noexec' (such as /var) and after remounting everything ( a clean reboot ) aptitude was broken and could no longer install or remove packages. after restoring my original fstab (where all partitions are 'defaults') it worked again. so maybe KDM was affected as well.

I'll make a thread later on this if I can't figure it out.