I'm a new linux user, and I was incredibly surprised at the ease at which I partitioned my hard drive from windows (using partition magic), and then booted to a slackware installer from the slackware 9.0 iso I downloaded from the slackware website. This success was fleeting however - after installing and configuring everything, I restarted to boot from a boot disk (floppy) that I had just created. I logged in as root, and everything seemed to be going great. I typed the command "startx," and after staring at a grossly messed up screen for a while, the screen came into focus with an immovable mouse and a window in the upper left hand corner saying: "Could not start Kdeinit. Check your installation." I could not move the mouse to ckick "okay," nor would hitting enter clear the window. The system seemed pretty frozen, and did not respond to ctrl+alt+del either (unless its not supposed to=I'm a total n00b).

Thanks for any advice you may have,
Cam

It is supposed to respond to Ctrl-Alt-Del.

After a reboot, before starting X again,
lokk at the logfile for the X Server....

less /var/log/XFree86.0.log

Cheers,
Tink

thanks for your help - I have since reinstalled, and it is no longer frozen (mouse moves, and when I click on okay I am sent to the command line) but my error message remains and it still does not respond to ctrl+alt+del. I'll do what you've said, but what exactly am I looking for?

Sorry I'm such a n00b,
Cam

No sweat, I'm a n00b in guru-clothing
myself ;) ...

Just check whether there's any indication
of errors in the file, it's ALWAYS written to
(unless the box completly dies on you) ...
is it still ssh-able when frozen?

It would be interesting to see which driver
X is picking on your machine (again, the log
mentioned above), and what your actual
hardware is (lspci -v).

Cheers,
Tink

I'm sorry, I don't know how to tell whether its still SSH-able or not. Also, I'll tell you what driver ist's trying to use, and what hardware I'm on when I get home (I'm at a friends house now).

Thanks for your help.

Also, when I installed, I picked the bare.i (I think) kernel. I saw in another thread that in order to have slackware recognize your CD-writer you have to use the scsi.s kernel. Is this true?

Thanks,
Cam

Also, does anyone besides Tinkster have anything differnent to say?

Nope, you only need a scsi-kernel is your primary
hdd is scsi. Bare.i is just fine if your devices are
IDE.

Cheers,
Tink

<ctrl>+<alt>+<del> should start a logout under KDE (and I am assuming under gnome as well). What you need to do to kill a X session that has gone bad is press <ctrl>+<alt>+<backspace>. You can also try a different console by pressing <ctrl>+<alt>+F2 Well F2 thru F6 will work as F1 is used to run the output fromthe Xserver - that is the log file that is created and mentioned in the previous posts. F7 is used for the actual display of the Xsession (that is how you can get back to you X session when you leave it).

Oce you are at a new login prompt log in as root or yourself then su - . From there you can do a

ps ax |grep X

to find out the X servers PID so that you can kill it (if it isn't responding to the <ctrl>+<alt>+<backspace>

Lemmie know how it goes. As well what kind of card are you using? As well have you modified anything in the /opt/KDE directory? You may end up just installpkg-ing the KDE packages back in (after removing the old ones first that is:-) )

I'm sorry bunhead but that was 100% over my head. I'll see what I can do, but my main problem is getting KDE to work period - I haven't modified anything anywhere - its a fresh install. I'm not going to worry about killing x sessions right now. I'm using a relatively old ATI graphics card (if that's what you're asking for) - a 3D RAGE LT PRO AGP 2X (unless my windows is deluding itself...).

I think I might try playing with some xfree configurations to get rid of the error (I'm not sure if that'll do anything at all). Sorry I'm so lost, and thanks for your help,
Cam

You have, generally, seven consoles available. If you don't run X, you have six which you access by pressing Alt+F[1-6] and, if you do run X, that's conventionally on the seventh terminal. Since X uses Alt keys for various functions, to access the first six terminals, you press Ctrl in addition to the other keys while it's running. And Ctrl+Alt+Backspace kills X like Ctrl+Alt+Delete "kills" the system as a whole (executes a sort of 'shutdown -r now') - unless your window manager/desktop intercepts the keystrokes and pops up an exit dialog instead. So to escape an X session gone bad, you can either escape to an alternate console or just kill the session. (And actually, it was my understanding that whatever console you started X from was devoted to output, not necesssarily F1.)

Each process that your system runs - and X is an app and apps are processes - has a PID (Process IDentification) which can be displayed by the ps command or such commands as top. When you see the number displayed, typing the command 'kill' followed by the number ends the process. To do this, you need to su (switch user) and enter root's password.

That's the basics of what he was saying. First you'd try to close an app, but you're not running any apps yet other than the X server and maybe the window manager/desktop environment. So you'd try to Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to shut down the X server. If that failed, you'd try Ctrl+Alt+Fwhatever and find the PID and kill it that way. If that failed, you'd try Ctrl+Alt+Delete from the console. If *that* failed, you'd basically have to flip the power switch and hope you were using reiserfs. *g*

As far as how to help, I have no idea. *lol* Sorry, but you probably need to run xf86config and set up your graphics card. I just thought I'd try to explain some of the other stuff for future reference. If you know the card and refresh rates of your monitor and model and connection of your mouse and all of it is supported, you shouldn't have too much trouble.

Well, and also check your Xsession or xinitrc files and make sure those are okay, and make sure xinit is on the path and all the usual there.

I am sorry about my last post. I didn't mean to fire that much stuff over your head.

Could you email me the file /var/log/XFree86.0.log ?

As well could you send me the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ?

This is not a X problem it is a problem with KDE. But I just want to be sure that is why I asked for the XFree86.0.log file

at this point I would recommend that if you don't want to send me those log files that you remove the xinitrc file (don't worry it is just a softlink - kinda like a shortcut in windows.) and build a new one that points to a different windo manager (like gnome.) This coudl be done like this

su -
<type root password>
rm /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
ln -s /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.gnome /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
exit
startx

what this will do is
-log you in as root
-remove a softlink called xinitrc
-create a new softlink called xinitrc thta points to xinitrc.gnome
-log you out as root
-try to start an X session.

now as a rule I don't use gnome but it serves as a good test as I am fairly sure that this is a KDE issue not a X issue.

Hope this helps. BTW my email is bunhead@bunhead.mine.nu

ok, I don't know what's going on - almost everything is going right over my head. I decided that, before trying any of what you guys have been saying, I would start with a fresh slate. I deleted my original linux partition and made a new one (just to be sure!) and installed Slackware 9.0 to that. My Lilo is working beautifully, and the slackware command prompt seems to be working just as well, however, when I startx - things get bad. My first install [I've installed a total of 3 times now - none of which have gotten rid of my afformentioned error (could not start kdeinit blah blah...)] behaved identically. I see the error message and cannot move my mouse or switch virtual consoles (unless Alt+F1, Alt+F2, etc. is not the way to do that...). Ctrl+Alt+Backspace will boot me out to the command prompt every time though. My second install gave me the use of the mouse - both in startx and the command prompt (although I don't know how to do much either than highlight text with it there) but now I don't have that - I don't know what I've done differently in the installation?. What is wrong? I would be happy to email files, post files here, or edit xinitrc's, if only I knew how. I'm really sorry if this is a pain in the ass to any of you, but if you could please tell me how to do any of these things I'd be most thankful.

Thanx a bunch,
Cam

Did you run xf86cfg before starting the X? Was it able to detect all your (X required) devices?

I did not run it the first time, but I have since run it. It did not detect my mouse, so I added my mouse, and it still won't work. I have a feeling though, that kde is not only not accepting mouse input, but its also hung - ctrl+alt+backspace is the only thing I can do, I can't hit enter to click ok, and I can't switch virtual consoles.

Thanks for your help,
Cam

The key strokes for virtual consoles are
<ctrl>+<alt>+Fx

not

<alt>+Fx

Do me a favour. At a consle prompt just type X not startx. What this will do is tell Linux to just start the X server. If it works properly you will get a screen that looks like a kinda mesh and a big X in the centre of the screen (the big X will be your mouse pointer). This will test to see if your XF86config file is correctly setup. You will have to <ctrl>+<alt>+<backspace> out of it, as there wont really be much that you can do, but it will let you test. As I said in an earlier post I don't think this is a X issue, I think that there is something that got messed up somehow in your KDE install. Your issues with the mouse were resolved before by either pointing your /dev/mouse to /dev/psaux or changing your XF86config file to look at /dev/psaux.

ok, I typed X and I got the mesh wallpaper with the big X pointer, so that's a go, I suppose. I will also fix my mouse now.

Thank you,
Cam