Sid dist-upgrade breakage. Be careful.

johnMG · 04-12-2006, 08:59 AM

I was running Sid at home and did an apt-get update / -u dist-upgrade last night. There were some major X11 changes (it's being separated into multiple packages to be more modular).

Now I can't get into my system. I get the xdm prompt, but logging in fails and just gives me the prompt again. Ctrl-Alt-F_key doesn't get me to a virtual console (!) -- my keyboard just beeps at me.

So -- for anyone else out there running Sid, remember: Sid is meant for devs who spend their time working on and fixing this kind of thing. If you don't want to risk losing everything, don't run Sid. OTOH, if you can help fix stuff like this and want to contribute and file bug reports (or *fix* the bugs), please run Sid.

I'm guessing I can still ssh into the system, and so will probably just go in, grab any files that changed since the last backup, and then seriously consider going back to using Etch.

rickh · 04-12-2006, 10:23 AM

Are you, perchance running AMD64? There are major changes going on there. Read my thread in the Debian Forum about that.

johnMG · 04-12-2006, 11:38 AM

No. Just a regular Athlon Thunderbird with the current newest (as of Sid) k7 kernel.

nx5000 · 04-12-2006, 11:55 AM

Then look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log

A week ago, I tried Xorg 7 from experimental to see this modular concept.
And after a 5mn upgrade, my X would'nt start anymore.

I corrected the problem by creating
/usr/share/fonts/X11 point to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/

Then it complained that there was already an xorg.conf and stopped the process, so I deleted it. It was replaced by the maintainer xorg.conf which didn't add the FontPath line related to XFontServer so I added it back.

gruven · 04-12-2006, 12:50 PM

I just upgraded this box to Xorg 7.0 yesterday. KDE works fine, but gnome is borked for me. nvidia-glx also seems to still depend on Xorg 6.9, so I am on the nv driver until they get that fixed.

Sure, I could compile it myself, but waiting is half the fun.

johnMG · 04-12-2006, 12:55 PM

During the apt-get dist-upgrade, the messages that scrolled by in the terminal window mentioned various X11-related directories that "weren't empty and couldn't be deleted".

Thanks for the tips nx. When I get home, I'll ssh in and see about posting any relevant contents from that log file.

oldwordsmith · 04-12-2006, 01:53 PM

I found this over at the Kanotix user forums a bit ago. I had the same problem last night. I have not tried this yet, will tonight.

From "Neuer_User" as a reply to a post by "sermat":
"wget http://kanotix.com/files/fix-xorg7.sh , update-scripts-kanotix.sh , apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade [on init 3], then run 'sh fix-xorg7.sh' run nvidia or ati script"

This was the reply:

"Neuer_User: THANK YOU sooo much !!! Followed your instructions to the letter and all is perfect again.
Best regards,
serge."

nx5000 · 04-12-2006, 04:34 PM

Yeah I think its better to wait a bit for those who want to keep a running X window system.

Thanks oldwordsmith, it seems to do something related:
For the fontpart, this script changes /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ to /usr/lib/X11/fonts/ , although mine contained an old reference to /usr/share/fonts/X11. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=362105

Kanotix is really doing some nice job, I really like this distro.

For the keyboard problem you have to install the last version of xkb-data (it should be done automatically but its not, see http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=362105 )

I can't remember but I think I also did a workaround (reforce the link to the place where X is really) for this:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=362223

After reading this post, I looked at the unstable branch and saw it was providing 7.0.10, while I had the 7.0.9 from experimental. So I upgraded.. And now firefox doesn't display

Btw, .xsession-errors is also intersting to look at.

johnMG · 04-12-2006, 07:47 PM

If I ssh in, then tail the Xorg log, there's quite a bit there, but here's some stuff that might be relevant:

Code:

FreeFontPath: FPE "unix/:7100" refcount is 2, should be 1; fixing.
{snip lots of usual-looking Radeon stuff}
error opening security policy file /usr/lib/xserver/SecurityPolicy
(WW) Couldn't load XKB keymap, falling back to pre-XKB keymap

If I tail my ~/.xsession-errors file for the name I'm logging in as, there's nothing being appended.

oldwordsmith · 04-12-2006, 08:26 PM

Good morning/afternoon/evening all!
I tried the instructions per my previous post and "lo and behold" it worked!!!!
nx5000 and johnMG your posts are waaaaaaaay over my head right now, but I'm learning and I thank you both for that!

netcoffee · 04-12-2006, 11:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnMG

Now I can't get into my system. I get the xdm prompt, but logging in fails and just gives me the prompt again. Ctrl-Alt-F_key doesn't get me to a virtual console (!) -- my keyboard just beeps at me.

Hi johnMG,

Pls "aptitude install xkb-data" and it will be ok.
Good Luck!

johnMG · 04-13-2006, 11:04 AM

Thanks netcoffee. Turns out though, that since I wasn't submitting bug reports for Sid or Testing anyway, and also since I'm pretty much just using xterm's and IceWM, I reinstalled and am using Sarge for now.

towjamb · 04-13-2006, 12:12 PM

On a related note ...
Recent Sid dist-upgrade broke my Nvidia driver. I always used the nvidia-installer from their site but it failed to upgrade this time. Anyway, I installed the new driver (8756) the "Debian way":
http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/Debian-nVidia/
It worked! As a bonus, fonts are now gorgeous.
Go figure.

or1onas · 04-13-2006, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnMG

If I ssh in, then tail the Xorg log, there's quite a bit there, but here's some stuff that might be relevant:

Code:

FreeFontPath: FPE "unix/:7100" refcount is 2, should be 1; fixing.
{snip lots of usual-looking Radeon stuff}
error opening security policy file /usr/lib/xserver/SecurityPolicy

I'm facing the same problem after last night's update to xorg 7.0
Following the above msg, i get a:

Code:

xinit: No such file or directory (errno 2): no program named xterm in PATH

Any ideas how this problem can be resolved?

JackieBrown · 04-13-2006, 11:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickh

Are you, perchance running AMD64? There are major changes going on there. Read my thread in the Debian Forum about that.

have you notice that sux and startx and pretty much everything related to xbase-utis does not work for the amd64 right know?

i think we are stuck along with all non i386

Debian Package Search

Good thing is kdm and gdm still work to start x