GNOME fail

[BenFischer]

The other day I installed a few updates, and then firefox froze on me. So I shutdown the computer and got sent to the recovery menu. I selected fix xserver, and then boot normally. Since then I have not been able to get my graphical display working.

I don't know if one of the updates messed up gnome, or if using fix x server was responsible. I've done a lot of searching and the most common solution was people reinstalling their OS... I would really perfer not to take that route. How can I troubleshoot this problem to something more specific?

Here are a few of the things I've tried so far.

When I load the OS (Ubuntu 8.04.1 Kernel 2.6.24-22-generic) I have to change my console to see anything, and I encounter this.

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Loading, please wait...
kinit: name_to_dev_t(/dev/disk/by-uuid/02a8589e-2006-4177-ab27-c643188ee718) = sda7(8,7)
kinit: trying to resume from /dev/disk/by-uuid/02a8589e-2006-4177-ab27-c643188ee718
kinit: No resume image, doing normal boot...
###
(This was apperently a common problem in fiesty, but not so much in heron. I'm running heron though..)

Then I can log at any of the first six consoles, but not the graphical one, ctrl alt F7 does nothing. When I try running gdm at the command line I get this:

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gdm: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_signal_accumulator_true_handled
###

startx gives me my /var/log/xorg.0.log file as an error message.

[Dave_Connor]

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xorg-server

[BenFischer]

I tried it and got this
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Package 'xorg-server' is not intalled and no info is available. Use dpkg --info (-dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files, and dpkg --contents (-dpkg-deb ---contents) to list their contents. /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: xorg-server is not installed.
###
I tried sudo apt-get install xorg-server and to my dismay discovered my internet connection no longer worked either. I don't know what happened but now suddenly I can't even ping google much less download packages.

Edit: Fixed the connection. Sudo apt-get install xorg-server gave me xorg-server is already the newest version. No new files were installed.

Thank you for the advice though, anybody else in the mean time?

Thanks,
Ben

[Dave_Connor]

You might have to reinstall. Make sure your stuff is backed up onto another computer with a direct connection or through an external drive and reinstall.

[BenFischer]

Sigh.. Ok so what files should I back up in order to maintain all my programs, files, and internet settings without reloading all the problems that exist now.
I'll try this command
tar cvpzf backup.tgz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/backup.tgz --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/sys --exclude=/dev --exclude=/sys
is there anything else I need to exclude though so that my old version of gnome and xserver won't mess things up?