Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1377 mails)

[grimmer@xxxxxxx (Lenz Grimmer)]

Hi,

On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Bernie Gardner wrote:

> I have had SuSE5.2 set up on my laptop for a couple of months, and
> overall like very much, having changed from RedHat.  I have a strange
> problem now I would appreciate some help with.  After upgrading to the
> 2.0.35 kernel and the 1.0 version of kde, I can't use either kdm or xdm.
> I can get into xwindows fine using startx, but if I set runlevel 3 in
> inittab, the screen starts flashing in text mode a second after it
> appears to try to start the graphical login screen.  Nothing seems to
> break this flashing other than a CTRL-ALT-DEL reboot, during which the
> flashing continues during much of the shutdown procedure.  After a
> couple of weeks of intermittent study of the problem I'm ready for some
> suggestions.

Hmm, this is a favourite one. Although I never heard about this after a
kernel update!

Anyway, I'm too lazy to type a personalized reply, let me just quote from
our Support Database:

XDM doesn't start ...

Symptom:

      The X server starts without problems via startx but it fails when
      XDM is being used. 

      After the start of xdm or a change to runlevel 3 the screen is
      blinking and no change to the console (with CTRL-ALT + FX) is
      possible anymore. 

Often the system can still be shut down the usual way with STRG+ALT+DEL.
However when the runlevel is set to 3 in /etc/inittab ("Graphical login"
was chosen in YaST), the same phenomenon appears after the reboot.

Cause:

Most likely this happens due to timing problems during the start-up of the
X server. As a consequence xdm tries to restart the X server and thus
enters an endless loop.

Solution:

If you've chosen the graphical login in YaST, then specify the kernel
parameter "2" at the LILO bootprompt (e.g. with linux 2).

The system will now boot as usual but won't start the graphical login. You
can now login as root at the login prompt.

If you don't use LILO, an alternative is to boot the rescue system and to
mount the root partition. With an editor (e.g. 'vi'), search for

# default runlevel
id:3:initdefault:

in <mountpoint>/etc/inittab. 

Change "3" to "2" and store the file. The system won't change to runlevel
3 anymore so neither xdm nor kdm will be started.

You can now be reboot.

With an editor, remove the option -quiet from the line, that starts the X
server in the file /usr/X11/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers.

This way the X server gets more time to identify the hardware when being
started by xdm.

HTH,

        LenZ

------------------------------------------------------------------
 Lenz Grimmer                                       S.u.S.E. GmbH
 <A HREF="mailto:grimmer@xxxxxxx";>mailto:grimmer@xxxxxxx</A>                         Gebhardtstrasse 2
 <A HREF="http://www.suse.de";><A HREF="http://www.suse.de</A">http://www.suse.de</A</A>>                         90762 Fuerth, Germany

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