I am unable to startx on a Dell R730 server:

sudo lshw -c display
*-display UNCLAIMED
description: VGA compatible controller
product: G200eR2
vendor: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0a:00.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=64 maxlatency=32 mingnt=16
resources: memory:90000000-90ffffff memory:91800000-91803fff memory:91000000-917fffff

Screen attached.

Attached Thumbnails

 

What does /var/log/Xorg.0.log have?

attached.

Attached Files

Xorg.2.log (48.3 KB, 28 views)

Just a another fact... I am able to get the cursor(mouse) and a black screen by adding exec startkde to .xinitrc.

I may have missed it, but I don't see that the display server has found a valid mode. What happens if you make it automatically start a terminal then have it make a noise or do something else you can detect with a blank screen?

One more clue.

During system startup, as soon as gnome-desktop loads de screen starts to flicker/blink and it does that for about a minute.

I login in text mode and type startx and get the error already posted.

That happened every time before Ubuntu was updated ,but I was able to startx after the screen stopped blinking....Now I cant.

Hasn't X started before gnome-desktop?

No. No GUI. I can get openbox to start but not gnome-session.

I am also able to run xfce4-session but only as root. Many apps dont open (like virt-manager).

Its getting better I guess, xfce4 would be ok if I could run as user and not root.

Screen attached.

Attached Thumbnails

   

Sorry to keep feeding my own post...

After installing xorg-legacy I was able to run xfce4 as user without sudo. Gnome is no go.

Problem now is that most apps will either fail with input/output error and some of them will not open and don't report any errors, clicking does nothing...

Any ideas?

Check attach

Attached Thumbnails

 

You poor fellow! You seem to have been stuck with me. I don't use a desktop; in fact I don't even use my window manager except for windowing. I start a single xterm then start all apps from the command line.

Your original message seemed to say that you couldn't start X at all, a problem that has happened to me when I've bungled my xorg.conf so that it has no valid video modes.

But your subsequent messages show you have started stuff. Anytime root can do something but a user can't is permissions. Since X is usually user-available, I'm surprised at permissions' problems.

Is 'xorg-legacy' a version of xorg.conf?

Can you start a shell in your last configuration? If so, can you start apps in it?

What is 'openbox'?