Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 18:05:03 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: relatively urgent question (about X) Message-ID: <40AE7D0F.50201@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <20040521203904.GB34378@tao.thought.org> References: <20040521175046.GA557@tao.thought.org> <40AE48F6.6030009@potentialtech.com> <20040521203904.GB34378@tao.thought.org>
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Gary Kline wrote: > On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 02:22:46PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote: > >>Gary Kline wrote: >> >>> For some months I've had increasing troubles with my >>> 4.9/4.10 abruptly crashing. This morning I found my >>> workhorse server, tao, down and hung up while trying to >>> fsck /usr. I cleaned everything thoroughly and then >>> started xdm. The grey screen showed, the mouse was frozen; >>> after 30 seconds, BOOM. Another crash. After yet >>> another round of fsck's, I tried startx. To see what >>> errs might kill the X11 boot. No: same blank grey screen, >>> same frozen mouse,same OS crash. >>> >>> I tried /stand/sysinstall to reconfigure X. No luck. >>> I'm now doing my next stable sup upgrade and am doing >>> yet another buildworld && buildkernel. >>> >>> I doubt this will resolve the X Window snafu, tho. So::: >>> what x11/*XFree* ports do I have to fetch/build/install?? >>> ((I'm assuming the reason for the crash was X-related, >>> but this is only a first-SWAG.) Also, if anybody has had a >>> similar problem, please let me know. >> >>I'm just speculating, but it sounds like it's your window manager >>that's not starting, although X seems to actually be working. > > When I just tried X with startx (as root), I always got > the defaukolt twm. Here is what in root's .xsession:: > > twm & > xterm & > xterm & > > I'm using ctwm in my /home/kline acct. Pretty basic. Perhaps my speculation is wrong, then ... it just sounded like a wm problem from your description. >>In my experience, big, complex wms like Gnome and KDE tend to have >>trouble off and on. I've found that deleting everything from /tmp >>will sometimes fix things. Other times, I've been able to get things >>going again by deleting the .gnome (and other, similar directories) >>from my home directory. Note that this second one blows away all your >>Gnome settings. > > I'm test gnome and kde3 on my new 5.2 server; it's temp'y > offline. There are lots of GUI-goodies in these wmanagers > but my bias is to 'keep it simple, sir'. ctwm along with > lots of tuning has served for around 7 years... . > > Snce my mouse "X" was frozen, maybe the mouse daemon never > exec'd. Could that have crashed the OS? Another strange > new fault is that rc.network took a long time to do anything. Yeah, that doesn't sound like a wm. > This line: > > May 21 09:55:17 tao /kernel: Doing initial network setup: > > hung more than a minute. Do you//does anybody have a clue > re this new problem? In /etc/rc.network, the first thing that happens after that message is printed is the hostname is set if not already set. I wonder if there's some reason the hostname command could be taking a long time if there's no hostname set yet? > Anyway, thanks for your data-points. I'll summarize to > the list if/when I figure out what's going oon. I've had > lots of strange events, but this is a new one...... Good luck. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com
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