Stuck booting into unresponsive X

Message

mikeym · Post by **mikeym** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 1:32 pm

HI,

I've got myself into a stupid pickle. I upgraded my X and tried to boot it but it wouldn't load my modules. I found that I needed to rebuild my xf86* packages so I started with xf86-video-ati and tried startx again to see if it had improved things a bit, but it loaded and my keyboard and mouse were completely unresponsive! I ended up having to hard reboot but it just loads the graphical logon manager (slim) and I have the same problem!!!

Could someone help unstick me from this mess??

P.S. I've tried all the usual key combos but none respond when I'm in X.

mikeym · Post by **mikeym** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 2:04 pm

I've found out how to get into a prompt. I needed to boot into single user mode so I could re-emerge the xf86 drivers for my mouse and keyboard. Since I'm using yaboot as my boot loader this worked:

Code: Select all

linux single

However after recompiling xf86-input-keyboard and xf86-input-mouse I still can't access my keyboard and mouse!!

Sadako · Post by **Sadako** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 2:05 pm

In the grub prompt, press "e" to edit rather than boot your desired entry, then append "softlevel=boot" to the "kernel" line.

This will prevent the services in the default runlevel being started, including xdm and/or x11 (unless you're starting them in the root runlevel, in which case look into booting into "single user mode").

Then you can remove xdm from the default runlevel, boot again, and re-emerge the other drivers.

Edit: I'm a slowpoke

Check your /var/log/Xorg.0.log for any warnings/errors?

VoidMage · Post by **VoidMage** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 2:42 pm

@mikeym: simply emerge xf86-input-evdev,
and both will work (though keyboard may be setup incorrectly,
depending on your layout).

poly_poly-man · Post by **poly_poly-man** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 2:50 pm

use the "i" key during the boot process to load everything except xdm, then fix from the commandline.

Or just ssh into the machine...

mikeym · Post by **mikeym** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 7:57 am

OK. I'm not sure what's going on.

Emerging xf86-input-evdev makes the mouse and keyboard respond, but like was suggested the keyboard is completely wrong.

Why after my upgrade did the mouse and keyboard stop working? What is xf86-input-evdev and how do I sort out my keyboard?

pandaxiongmao · Post by **pandaxiongmao** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 9:31 am

Maybe you got the wrong .fdi setting.
My experience was similar (keyboard & mouse stopped working right after the OS entered GUI), then I realized that I haven't performed rc-update hal default to activate hal during boot-up; it fixed the problem. The only missing keys are pagedown & menu.

VoidMage · Post by **VoidMage** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:52 pm

@pandaxiongmao: are you using xmodmap somewhere,
cause while menu may simply be a missing proper XkbOptions string,
a missing pagedown suggest an incorrect remaping ?

pandaxiongmao · Post by **pandaxiongmao** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 2:05 am

VoidMage wrote:@pandaxiongmao: are you using xmodmap somewhere,
cause while menu may simply be a missing proper XkbOptions string,
a missing pagedown suggest an incorrect remaping ?

Sorry, my bad. Page down button isn't missing, but it got replaced by Menu, and Menu button no longer works.
I never recalled tinkering around with xmodmap; I use dvorak, so does it have something to do with the problem?

VoidMage · Post by **VoidMage** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 3:01 am

@pandaxiongmao: it may be that way.
Unless you set it up correctly, keyboard starts as a standard
(qwerty) us layout.
Put your keyboard settings in an fdi file, restart hal, restart X.

pandaxiongmao · Post by **pandaxiongmao** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:17 am

I fixed the problem by using xev & assigned the new ID (the update changed the ID from 117 to 135) of Menu to Fluxbox's RootMenu shortcut. It also solved the PageDown problem that I had.

gami · Post by **gami** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:45 am

When upgrading Xorg, please make sure you read the Xorg 1.5 Upgrade Guide and have a look at the links to fdi files there. Having said that, the input system in Xorg 1.5 is a bit finicky about the correct keyboard rules. You might want to try if setting this to evdev fixes your issue with the remapped keys.