Xorg 6.8.2-r1. No screen movement for, like, minutes

[afabco]

yesterday morn I emerge -puD world'ed. And saw that xorg-x11 wanted to upgrade itself to xorg-x11-6.8.2-r1.

Oh wunnerful I sez.

But I went ahead and emerge -uD world.

And true to form X was broke after everything was finished.

Started with the dreaded 'duplicate symbol' bug

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-30 ... ight-.html and others

Got past that by:

USE="static" emerge xorg-x11, and got past the error described above.

Now I get a nice pretty blue screen with a white 2cm or so square in the middle and a dark bar (like the toolbar didn't get wrote) along the bottom. And that's it. No mouse. No keyboard. No <ctl-alt-bkspc>. For at least 15 minutes before I ssh in and reboot. Before I reboot I ps ax, and it doesn't show any X related anything running.

This is with kde-3.3.2 in /etc/rc.conf

With icewm in /etc/rc.conf, the screen is a nice darker blue for about 5 minutes. Then icewm stuff starts to appear. After about 7-10 minutes, the screen is complete, but the mouse doesn't move immediately. Move mouse. Count 15-30 seconds, pointer moves. Anything that will cause a screen alteration (say, moving the pointer over the toolbar) gives a screen freeze of maybe 2-5 minutes.

I can reboot from an ssh session.

I'm not real sure what to do next, but this behaviour obviously won't cut it.

Ideas?

Thanks!



But I guess it's progress....

[afabco]

I was thinking last night, this is behaviour similar to what happens if localhost isn't defined in /etc/hosts. Unfortunately, localhost is defined in /etc/hosts and is pingable. So much for that.

I did try backing down to 6.8.0-r5, unfortunately still have the same symptoms.

Ideas?

thanks

[tuxp3]

okay, i have had problems with WM/DE's taking a long time to come up with X (like your describing)

firstly - what other USE flags do u have for xorg-x11
pie, dlloader and pic cause the unresolved/duplicate symbols problem (maybe other flags do too) - so even tho static fixed it - it might not be the best thing
[edit] my USE for xorg-x11 has -dlloader -pic and if i ever change either of those to + it breaks my X (im using gcc3.4.* as defualt no ssp no hardened) [/edit]
but before you start recompiling X (remember to clean ccache and /var/tmp if u do)

what runlevel is net.lo in?
if net.lo is not being started then it could explain the long lonig delay between X starting and ur WM appearing - its happened to me.

check /var/log/X.org.0.log and/or any KDE/IceWM logs u might have - play around with a minimal WM like Flux or something else (rat poison ive heard is very very light (havent tried it tho)) to see if its WM specific or if its X

Just some thoughts, Tuxp3

[afabco]

re-emerged gtk+, still no change.

[afabco]

OK, I re-emerged xorg-x11 with USE= -pic -pie -hardened.

Rebooted, just because.

$ startx gives same symptoms.

decided to try

# X -configure

# X -config /root/xorg.conf.new, and my LCD screen gave me an 'input out of range' error (usually means clock or horiz sync too high).

Just on a lark, I deleted /etc/X11/xorg.conf

$ startx

Lo and behold! A usable screen and desktop! no stopping, no stuttering! Mouse moves just fine. Resolution is too small (looks like 800x600, and cntl-shift-+ and - only flip between this and something else, maybe 640x480?)

Very kewl. Progress. Let's see if it's repeatable.

So I exited out of KDE, to a bash prompt. logged out, rebooted, logged back in, startx...

Nice blue screen with a white square a little off center, no mouse no keyboard, no ctl-alt-bkspace, no nuthin.

ssh in, reboot, sigh.

[afabco]

ok, the key (or at least part of the key) on this seems to be

USE="-pic -pie -hardened".

I don't know which of the three is the one that's actually hosing things, or whether it's two of them, or all three. But at least startx (most of the time) brings up a usable desktop now.

The other symptom is weird.

If there's an /etc/X11/xorg.conf, the display is toast. Blue screen with a white box in the middle, and total keyboard and mouse lockout.

No /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and things work as above, with an 800x600 resolution.

The xorg.conf was generated using

# X -configure

The only obvious change that needed to be made was to change /dev/mouse to /dev/input/mice.

Am going to knock off for the day and go do something that my employer actually pays me to do.

Still open for ideas.

thx

[afabco]

well, now things are totally fsck'ed

After putting

x11-base/xorg-x11 -pie -pic -hardened

into /etc/portage/package.use

I rebooted, emerge sync'ed, started an emerge -e system, and went home.

this morning the emerge was finished, no problems reported. Kewl.

Reboot (I know I know, but when things are this fscked, rebooting can clear up a multitude of sins)

And we're back to the original problem of duplicate symbols.

AAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

I'm at a loss, other that a complete reinstall. From the symptoms, I doubt that'll fix anything though; I think I'll still have the same problems.

Is it time to just abandon this box, and do a redhat or debian install? I do have real work I have to be doing on this box....

[afabco]

forgot to mention:

tuxp3: thanks for the reminder about cleaning out /var/tmp

When things get the least bit screwy, the first thing I do is clean out ccache (all locations), take it out of make.conf, and emerge -C it. That way there's no questions.

I emerge -C'ed distcc long ago. Never could see any advantage to it, hell, was never even sure it was doing anything. the mon's were always empty, and compiles (on any machine) were never any faster.

[afabco]

ok, nothing I did really did any lasting good. What I ended up doing was disabling the onboard intel video, and putting in an old nvidia riva agp card I had laying around. Then did an X -configure and used the resulting xorg.conf. Things look fine now, and have been for a couple of days. Only weird thing is sometimes when I make a kernel change, the first startx comes up in 640x480. Exit and startx again, and it comes up in 1280x1024 (like it should)

I don't think the on-board video is bad, because it worked fine before the emerge, and it still works fine with another commercial operating system.

Oh well, chalk it up as another one of life's little mysteries.