Booting up to Konsole instead of KDE

[farout_leftie]

hi all

i am having problems booting up to my KDE gui. I have Mandrake 9.2 installed. I can't remember exactly what I did but I downloaded some updates to try to get some video player installed (i think it was mplayer).

Ever since then (about 3 days ago) whenever I boot up the computer it goes straight to the Konsole instead of the gui. Once in the Konsole I can't find any way to get back to my gui.

Can I have my gui back - please?

or will i have to reinstall?

thanks

[dylunio]

Try the code

startx

to enter gui;

dylunio

[Stormblazer]

1. Why to keep saying "Konsole"? If you have access to Konsole, then you have access to KDE, since Konsole is the default KDE X terminal.... The only thing I can think of is that you mean the console/terminal/command line.

2. As for booting, it's very likely this is a configuration problem. Very rarely in Linux do you have to reinstall everything. The worst thing that you might need to re-install is X or KDE.
First log in as root in the terminal.
Now type either startx or kdm.
If X doesn't load, then we know it's a problem with X or it's configuration.
In this case, post the results of this command, so we can see what happened.

grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Also post the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf

NOTE: I don't remember whether Mandrake 9.2 uses XFree86 or X.org. If it uses XFree86, than look for /etc/X11/XF86Config instead of xorg.conf, and I think the XFree86 log file is /var/log/XF86.0.log, but I'm not sure.

[valan]

Perhaps you're not booting into the proper runlevel? Try 'init 5' and see if it does anything.

[Stormblazer]

That'd be along the same lines as startx/gdm/kdm...

[valan]

It would be along the same lines, but it would also indicate an easy fix of changing a 3 to a 5 in /etc/inittab.

[farout_leftie]

thanks for all your help!

1) i tried typing
startx
and the message it gave me was
execve failed for /etc/X11/X (errorno 2) giving up
xinit: no such file or directory (errorno 2) : unable to connect to X server
xinit:no such process (error no 3):server error

2) i tried typing
kdm
but the prompt simply reappeared again

From 1) and 2) we can presumably know that it is a problem with X or its configuration?

3) Then i tried
grep EE /var/log/XFree86.0.log
and the message which came up was
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not immplemented, (??) unknown
(II) loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER

4) Finally I tried
grep EE /etc/X11/XF86Config
but the prompt simply reappeared again.

that's it - i am not sure what to do next

[cayalee]

i had the same problem in suse, i fixed it by typing sax2, but that isnt on mandrake. is it something along the lines of the madrake control centre?
anyways, you know the names of the "wizards" like harddrak and drakconf and such..
well if you type the name of that in at console you should be able to get into the system to change the video settings.