KDE won't start in runlevel 5

[jabulani-jonny]

Hey Guys,
Going through my second go 'round with Linux. I tried it about 6 months ago, but fell off the wagon when I spent more time trying to get my mouse to work
than actually doing anything. I'm giving it another shot now with openSuse 10.2. Still can't get my mouse to work, more on that later.

While trying to get it to work I somehow borked KDE so that it cannot load in runlevel 5. Meaning, I get to runlevel 5, but the gui doesn't load. When I log in as root and give a # startkde here's the message I get:

kdeinit: Aborting. $DISPLAY is not set
warning: connect ( ) failed: :No such file or directory
ksmserver: cannot connect to x server
ERROR: couldn't attach to DCOP server!
startkde: Shutting down...
Warning: connect ( ) failed: : No such file or directory
Error: can't contact kdeinit
Starting artsd!
kcminit: cannot connect to x server
startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
xprop: unable to open display ' '
usage: xprop [-options...] [[format [dformat]] atom]

Then it gives a bunch of -options that I'm not sure what to do with.

This problem came right after I ran some commands trying to get my mouse scroll wheel and buttons to work. Here's the website I got the commands from: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mouse_Scrollwheel

Here are the commands:

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5"

echo "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5" >> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

Also, I have, or had, XGL and Compiz running fine with the updated Nvidia drivers. Everything was sunny until I was trying to get the mouse to work. Not sure what I could've borked.

So the main problem is that I can't start KDE anymore...the secondary problem is my mouse:

I've already modified my xorg.conf file and xmodmap for the mouse. The problem is that when I run xev, the scroll wheel, tilt wheel and side buttons do not produce anything. So Linux isn't seeing those actions, which means that no matter what my xorg.conf file or xmodmap says, it's still not going to see it. I've got to figure out how to get those actions recognized.

Thanks for the help!!!!

Jonathan

[JHB]

This won't fix your problem, but if you want an application to appear on the GUI from the command line, you need to set the DISPLAY variable:
export DISPLAY=localhost:0
if you are using bash.

Is X running on your system?
Did you use <ctrl> <alt> F1 (for example) to get to a shell?
Try:
ps axvf |grep X
to see if the main X server (Xorg or Xgl) is running.

[AndrewB]

Did you make a backup of your xorg.conf before you editied it? If so reload that and see if it loads. If so there will/must be an error in your conf file.

[jabulani-jonny]

JHB,
I don't think X is running. I'll have to shutdown windows and go try your suggestion in a sec.

Andrew: yes, the xorg.conf has a backup. How do I go about renaming the current xorg.conf and loading the backup? What's the command for that?

Thanks for your help guys!

JHB: I ran the ps axvf | grep x command from runlevel 3. What am I looking for? I got about 5 lines of numbers and info. I will say that the first 3 lines had question marks at the beginning. I didn't write it down since I thought it was changing something rather than checking something.

Thx!

[AndrewB]

As root

mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.bak2
mv [where you back up is] /etc/X11/xorg.conf

[jabulani-jonny]

Hey Andrew,
I'll give that a shot...Currently I'm editing displaymanager to set it back to xorg from xgl. I'm following directions, or trying to, from this thread on the other suse forum as well.

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/in...howtopic=50786

so right now I'm stuck in editing displaymanager. I can't seem to get out, when typing esc:wq, nothing happens. As soon as I get back out I'll try your suggestion. Thx!

[jabulani-jonny]

Andrew, ran the commands. My boot screen changed to the christmas looking one and I got the Nvidia splash screen, which I wasn't getting, but it still doesn't load the gui.

I'm wondering if i should just reinstall. It'll take less time to do that and then try to get my mouse re-working, re-download and install the nvidia driver and re load Xgl and compiz, than to try and trouble shoot this. Whadya think?

Hell I might try Kubuntu since i'm still having issues with Suse.

[jabulani-jonny]

Well, I think I'll try re-installing this evening. I can't seem to get it straightened out. Oh well, i'll just have to redo it and re-install my nvidia driver and get my mouse working again, and get xgl and compiz working again. Damn.

[planecrazee]

I used to have that problem when installing openSUSE until I found a solution. When you come to the hardware configuration part of the installation just choose the skip feature. Then it will let you boot into the graphical login screen. Then you can configure your hardware later using Yast. I hope this helps.