10.1 crashes on boot, only nvidia splash

[richie]

Hi

 

I have been using Mandrake 10.1 for a while and today all of a sudden it no longer boots in to X and KDE. It just stops at the Nvidia splash screen and locks everything up. Even the magix sysrq will not work, I have to reset?!!

 

This is a Mandrake 10.1 CE upgraded to Official, but I did this ages ago. No updates were done today or yesterday, when it last worked. It seems to have failed all on its own.

 

I can start it and boot in to a console, init 3 and I can't find any obivous problems in the logs, though I might be looking in the wrong place. I checked /var/log/messages and Xorg errors. Changing to init 5 locks it up, very frustrating. I have uninstalled the nvidia driver and reinstalled, used XFDrake and it locked up again.

 

I am using the kernel and nvidia 6111 rpm that came with CE Club Edition.

 

Appreciate any help, I don't wish to reinstall.

 

thanks

Rich

[aRTee]

Seems you know your way around, so can you try to use the nv driver instead of the nvidia one?

Just trying to figure out where the problem lies.

 

Also, instead of doing

telinit 5

can you try, as user (or even root) to do

X

to start only the X server? (Kill it with ctrl-alt-backspace.)

If you get the cross and the 'blue screen of life' and you can move the pointer with your mouse, the issue is not with X or the nvidia driver - you'd have to look at mdkkdm or so, for the guilty party.

[richie]

Hi

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Seems you know your way around, so can you try to use the nv driver instead of the nvidia one?

Just trying to figure out where the problem lies.

 

Tried the nv driver, exact same thing. I thought I might get to see some logs using the nv driver rather than the splash screen of the nvidia driver, but now just a black screen and crash.

 

Also, instead of doing

telinit 5

can you try, as user (or even root) to do

X

to start only the X server? (Kill it with ctrl-alt-backspace.)

If you get the cross and the 'blue screen of life' and you can move the pointer with your mouse, the issue is not with X or the nvidia driver - you'd have to look at mdkkdm or so, for the guilty party.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Tried just X enter and it locks up. Does this suggest X is at fault? Tried looking at the logs again, but it seems to lock up so fast nothing appears to be written to give a clue.

 

You mentioned mdkkdm, I know about KDM, but not sure about mdkkdm. Please could you let me know where this is or should be?

 

Anything else to try? I thought about uninstalling the Xserver and reinstalling to see if any corrupt config files get reinstalled, good idea?

 

Cheers

Rich

[adamw]

If you haven't changed *anything* on Mandrake...are you sure it's not a hardware problem? Can you check the card in another system / OS?

[pmpatrick]

I assume this problem only occurred after you installed the nvidia driver, i.e. you could boot to a gui before. You could try unistalling the nvidia rpm using urpme and then give the newer 6629 nvidia driver a try. There's no rpm for it but it's easy to install.

[richie]

Hi

 

I used nvidia driver from the installation of Club CE 10.1 and it worked fine until now, I didn't use another driver before. Tried NV driver and same thing.

 

I have checked the hardware by booting knoppix and the GUI works so I think that rules out a hardware fault.

 

Should I have mdkkdm installed?

 

Rich

Edited December 16, 2004 by richie

[Darkelve]

Hi,

 

can you post the contents of /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc here?

[aRTee]

Side comment: mdkkdm is mandrakes version of kdm - so no need to install it, it's normally what you've got.

About the logs, if you do

X :1 &

(you can leave out the & if you want, the system will likely hang anyway), the logfile that gets created is at /var/log/Xorg.1.log;

you can check (in init 3) for the previous one at /var/log/Xorg.0.log and for the predecessor of that one: Xorg.0.log.old

So you see, there should be enough logfiles to make you happy.

 

And yes, all this seems to indicate that X is broken.

Hmmm, maybe deinstall and reinstall X? Not sure if that will not force deinstallation of all of KDE etc...

Or maybe update your system to 10.1 Official (again)?

[richie]

Hi

 

Side comment: mdkkdm is mandrakes version of kdm - so no need to install it, it's normally what you've got.

 

mdkkdm wasn't installed. You're a star for mentioning it earlier, as since I installed it, KDE started, yipeee, thank you. Though the login menu is slightly different, I have to click a user then another screen pops up for the password and session. Before I had one window, with a list of users and images to represent the user on the left and on the right a password box and below that the session. Not sure if I was using kdm before, does my description fit? There is actually an update to kdm on mandrake's 10.1 updates so I might give this a go.

 

Actually my wife tells me she switched the PC with Mandrake on it yesterday and didn't actually get round to logging in and using it. It was left for about 8 hours without anyone logging in at the GUI and I wonder if it somehow crashed and screwed kdm, pehaps when the monitor went to sleep?

 

About the logs, if you do

X :1 &

(you can leave out the & if you want, the system will likely hang anyway), the logfile that gets created is at /var/log/Xorg.1.log;

you can check (in init 3) for the previous one at /var/log/Xorg.0.log and for the predecessor of that one: Xorg.0.log.old

So you see, there should be enough logfiles to make you happy.

 

Yeah I was getting these and they were rotating, but nothing obivous. So still no idea how things got like this other than what I say above. I did get a bit paranoid and do a root kit check and ddos check, nothing all fine.

 

I'll try the kdm update and switch to using that and report back if properly fixed.

 

thanks for your help

Rich

[aRTee]

Note that you can set somewhere in mcc which login manager to use - kdm, mdkkdm or gdm (the gnome one).

 

I've switched back to kdm since then you can use kde control centre to configure it (background image etc) and I like to have no usernames show up...

 

Anyway, happy that you got things fixed - wonder why things suddenly went bad though.

[adamw]

Yeah, it's very unusual for it just to get broken like that. Maybe you ran MandrakeUpdate and it broke something (though it shouldn't do, of course!)

 

BTW, the package names for all the login managers:

 

xdm

mdkkdm

kdebase-kdm

gdm

 

xdm is the basic X one, it's ugly but functional. mdkkdm is Mandrake's customised manager, the default. kdebase-kdm is the stock KDE one. gdm is the GNOME one. Install 'em all and you can switch between them as artee posted (I think it's probably drakboot that lets you pick which to use). You'll probably find one of these is the one you were using before.

[richie]

xdm

mdkkdm

kdebase-kdm

gdm

 

xdm is the basic X one, it's ugly but functional. mdkkdm is Mandrake's customised manager, the default. kdebase-kdm is the stock KDE one. gdm is the GNOME one. Install 'em all and you can switch between them as artee posted (I think it's probably drakboot that lets you pick which to use). You'll probably find one of these is the one you were using before.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I updated kdebase-kdm and I am back using kdm all is working as before. Very bizarre it broke. I'm going to have another look through the logs to see if I can work it out, I'll post back if I find out.

 

Thanks everyone for their help.

 

Rich