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View Full Version : How many times have you broken X-server, how did you do that, and how did you fix it?



PmDematagoda
October 24th, 2007, 02:47 PM
As the title suggests, this thread is to find out how many times people have broken their GUI's, how they did it and how they solved it.

So, to start out, I will begin.

I broke my X-server 3 times on Feisty.

Once was when I installed VMWare using Automatix, I fixed it just by removing it, may this be a lesson for me to never use Automatix.

The second time was when I was messing with my OS too much and I deleted a few crucial files. I fixed them by just installing them again.

The third time is a complete mystery:), but I solved it by installing the Nvidia drivers again and reconfiguring X, I think the problem came up because of the second time I broke X.

That is it(For now;)). I am planning on breaking it again as fast as possible:) as I now have Gutsy to act as the "Stable" system which will probably save the day when my poor old 7.04 installation breaks out of exhaustion:D.

hessiess
October 24th, 2007, 03:51 PM
once when i was new to linux

Sunflower1970
October 24th, 2007, 03:55 PM
Recently:
Had trouble with the 2.6.20-16 kernel with Feisty...no matter how many different ways I tried to fix it would work, ended up reinstalling, and staying with 2.6.20-15 on one computer...

Under Edgy, I broke it so many different ways and fixed it so many different ways I can't even remember them all

muecker
October 24th, 2007, 04:13 PM
Running a Thinkpad T60 with ATI X300 video. Upgrading to Gutsy I could not get X to come up with the xorg.conf I had used for the last year with Dapper, Edgy and Feisty. I tried many different things and was able to get dual screens working with Xinerama, but that was not a good solution. I then tried to upgrad to ATI's 8.40.4 driver and that made things much worse. Now I could not get X to work even when I reverted back to the 8.37.1 version provided by Gutsy.

Yesterday ATI released the 8.42.3 driver and it works great in Gutsy (at least for me). The only thing I have found missing is the libGL.so.1 so I symlinked to libGL.so.1.2, which is a Mesa driver. It works but it not up to the full performance.

Paul820
October 24th, 2007, 04:15 PM
Never. If my computer is working, as it has been perfectly with feisty and gutsy, then i don't mess with anything. :)

PartisanEntity
October 24th, 2007, 04:18 PM
I must have broken it at least 10 times when I started using Ubuntu, Dapper was the version I was using back then :)

Bannor
October 24th, 2007, 05:58 PM
lets see 5+

first install nvidia card wouldn't work, then I finnally got the driver and fixed it, but then I filled up all the space on the computer and needed to reinstal. Of course by theat time I forgot how to add the driver. So I just pulled the card and used the onboard card. but when I upgraded to Gutsy I added it back in because gutsy has the drivers, but since I installed gutsy with the onboard card it didnt' install the right drivers so I tryied a complete reinstall ... that did go so wel.

then of coarse their is my nvidia laptop I had better luck with that since I used gutsy right away and the vesa driver worked until I could get around to installing nvidia

infoseeker
October 24th, 2007, 06:04 PM
Don't remember exactly, but it was switching from a 'generic' kernel to a '386' kernel, or something similar. Was some time back (Feisty days).

EdThaSlayer
October 24th, 2007, 06:35 PM
I have broken it quite a few times. Most of the time it was through using the proprietary ATI drivers, but a dpkg-reconfigure fixes that. Other times it was because of the installation of a certain important program.

angkor
October 24th, 2007, 07:21 PM
5+

Back in the days it used to be broken every other day :D Usually it was fixed by

a)removing the nvidia drivers
b)reinstalling the nvidia drivers
c)dpkg-reconfiguring the xserver
d)messing in the xorg.conf
e) a strange and random combination of the above

Those were the days *sighs* Nowadays I only need to reinstall the drivers after a kernel upgrade. Not much trouble anymore

Crashmaxx
October 24th, 2007, 08:44 PM
I've lost count, but most of them were on breezy and from trying to install compiz. Haven't had a single issue for a long time now.

FuturePilot
October 24th, 2007, 08:55 PM
I haven't broken it anytime recently. But when I first started with Ubuntu I must have broken it like 20 times.

tenmillionmilesaway
October 24th, 2007, 10:29 PM
Loads and Loads, but not since Edgy im liking the stability of the newer releases :)

Scruffynerf
October 25th, 2007, 01:12 AM
5+

Back in the days it used to be broken every other day :D Usually it was fixed by

a)removing the nvidia drivers
b)reinstalling the nvidia drivers
c)dpkg-reconfiguring the xserver
d)messing in the xorg.conf
e) a strange and random combination of the above

Those were the days *sighs* Nowadays I only need to reinstall the drivers after a kernel upgrade. Not much trouble anymore

Exactly my experience. Biggest pet peeve. So much so, I've a sticky note with the dpkg voodoo stuck on the side of my compouter. It was horrible, horrible with Edgy, Feisty was much better, not tried Gutsy, I'm just going to wait for Heron.

-grubby
October 25th, 2007, 01:14 AM
never. I don't fix anything if its not broken