[TriLUG] X will not start on new Mandriva 2007 installation

[Steve Litt]

On Saturday 23 December 2006 18:16, Douglas Ward wrote:
> I am hoping for a Christmas miracle...  :)
>
> I installed Mandriva 2007 (fully updated through urpmi) on my Dell Latitude
> D620 laptop.  X will not start!  It returns the following error:
>
> Fatal server error:
> no screens found
> X10: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0:
>        after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
>
> I have been working on this today and cannot seem to make sense of it.  In
> my desperation I have uploaded the following files for your reading
> pleasure:
>
> http://www.trilug.org/~douglas/xorg.conf
> http://www.trilug.org/~douglas/Xorg.0.log
>
> If anyone can offer any assistance it would certainly be most appreciated.
> I can run the laptop fine in command line mode but would love to use the
> gui.  FYI: kubuntu and ubuntu both install and run properly with no
> problems.  This seems to be a Mandriva specific problem.  Thanks!  Merry
> Christmas!

I haven't looked at your xorg.conf/0.log in detail because such things make me 
go blind but I have some suggestions.

First, from the command prompt, try running rerunning drakx11, try a few 
different things, and see if any work. Also, get the specifications of your 
monitor, and when you configure your monitor, configure it "custom" and plug 
in those specifications. drakx11/XFdrake go way too conservative when they 
plug and play probe the monitor.

If you can't get it working with drakx11/XFdrake, back up your current 
xorg.conf, boot a livecd version of Ubuntu or Knoppix, copy the xorg.conf to 
Mandrake's /etc, reboot, and probably it will work. You can then exploit the 
differences between the two xorg.conf files to come up with the best for your 
machine while running Mandriva.

I regularly boot Knoppix in order to get a valid xorg.conf for my 
Mandrake/Mandriva machines, and have been doing so for years. Sometimes I 
just run the Knoppix xorg.conf, and sometimes I need to tweak it for best 
performance, but for years I've been doing it and it usually works just fine.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: Universal Troubleshooting Process books and courseware
http://www.troubleshooters.com/