Lost gui after ending xorg process.

[Alexalad]

In short, I checked my system monitor a few weeks ago and went to the tab "processes." I noticed that "xorg" was taking up 100% of my cpu and I selected it, then clicked "end process." Immediately afterward, my computer restarted and now I don't have a gui. I have a fullscreen terminal.
I'm not very experienced with ubuntu (obviously). And when I use startx, I get this output:

xauth: /home/*username*/.Xauthority not writable, changes will be ignored
xauth: error in locking authority file /home/user/.Xauthority

exec: 3: /usr/bin/X: not found
giving up.
xinit: no such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to X server
xinit: no such process (errno 3): server error.
xauth: error in locking authority file /home/user/.Xauthority

I assumed it was just a package problem, so I uninstalled xorg, xserver-xorg and ubuntu-desktop. But when I tried to install them, it output that the packages couldn't be found. Anyone have any ideas as to what the problem is or more importantly, is it fixable? I'm still not even sure how ending a process affected my whole gui. Luckily, I have a live USB and have already backed up all my important files to an external hardrive.

[carranty]

Well I'm not surprised the computer restarted when you shutdown xorg - you shouldn't really be stopping processes unless you know what they do - but it shouldn't have caused any persistent problems, it should have been fine after a reboot. What else did you do in that session (between the time you turned on the computer and stopped xorg)?

Have you not had a gui at all for the last few weeks, or does it sometimes work and sometimes not?

When you say you use startx what do you mean? Are you typing startx in the terminal and hitting enter? Do you log into this terminal first, do any error messages come up before you type startx?

Can you paste the output of your xorg configuration file to this thread, it should be in /etc/X11/xorg.

Also, please paste the output of

ls -l /usr/bin/X

and

ls -l /home/user/.Xauthority

EDIT : Before you do all that, I've read that some people have had success simply by deleting the Xauthority file and rebooting. I wouldn't recommend deleting it, but rename it as something else

cd 
mv .Xauthority .XauthorityBak

and then reboot. You may need superuser privileges for that last bit, depending on the permissions of the file

[Alexalad]

Haha, yeah, I figured that out the hard way.

In that particular session, I didn't do anything because everything was so slow as soon as I booted up. That's why I ended xorg, thinking it would help. I might (i'm not sure) have updated some packages in the session before.

And, no. The gui has never worked since then.

Um, I login, and everythings fine. No errors or anything. After I login, I type startx. So yes, I type startx in the terminal then press enter. And no errors occur until I press enter.

My xorg.conf file looks like this:

Section "screen"
	Identifier	"default screen"
	Defaultdepth	24
EndSection

Section "module"
	Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"default device"
	Driver	"fglrx"
EndSection

Sudo ls -l /usr/bin/X output:
-rwsr-sr-x 1 root root 9664 2010-04-08 18:53 /usr/bin/X

Sudo ls -l /home/username/.Xauthority output:
-rw------- 1 root root 0 2011-11-29 17:51 /home/username/.Xauthority

And I tried your last suggestion, but nothing changed when I reboot.

[carranty]

I think your problem is with the permissions of the Xauthority file, I'm pretty sure it shouldn't belong to root, though i don't have one of my own to compare it to at the moment.

If you haven't already done so, copy .XauthorityBak back to .Xauthority and type

sudo chown username .Xauthority

replacing 'username' with your username and then reboot.

[Alexalad]

I copied back, entered your command, reboot, and no change unfortunately.

[carranty]

I'm not sure then. I'll get back to you tomorrow when I have access to my 10.04 install. I'll be able to compare files better then. Hopefully some one will come along before then who knows more than me!

[MG&TL]

If you haven't had xorg and xserver installed, then it's no wonder that startx can't find /usr/bin/X.

I imagine that you will not have your GUI back until you install those packages. Could you give us the exact error message that it outputs when you try and install those packages?

[Alexalad]

Ok, I just tried to install xserver-xorg, and it output:

Package is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-core
E: Package xserver-xorg has no installation candidate

[MG&TL]

So... install what it suggests.

[Alexalad]

I tried, but I got the same output, except there are no packages to replace them.
I still got:
E: Package xserver-xorg-video-intel has no installation candidate