X11 Xserver startup problem on a Raspberry PI

[Robert Heller]

At  Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:

> 
> At Tue, 27 Jun 2017 08:55:35 +1000 Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer at who-t.net> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > On Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 09:20:32AM -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
> > > I have a Raspberry Pi (Model 2 B) running a fairly recent version of Raspbian 
> > > (2017-04-10-raspbian-jessie.zip).  I have it start up to the console login, 
> > > since most of the time I just ssh into it from another machine (either my 
> > > CentOS laptop or desktop).  I just tied to login into its console (using my TV 
> > > as a monitor) and using the startx command t fire up the GUI, but it is 
> > > failing.  I *think* it is having some sort of problem with the input device I 
> > > am using: a combo keyboard / trackball:
> > 
> > there are no error messages in the log regarding libinput, it all comes up
> > normally. So whatever the issue is, I don't think that's it. the logind
> > messages looked fine too, so that shouldn't be an issue either.
> > 
> > fwiw, you could easily verify it with sudo libinput-debug-events, if that
> > handles the events correctly then the driver will too and you can mostly
> > rule out libinput issues.
> 
> Well, libinput-debug-events does not seem to be installed...  What package 
> would it be in?  dpkg-query -l \*libinput\* yields:
> 
> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
> | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
> |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> ||/ Name                        Version      Architecture Description
> +++-===========================-============-============-===================================================================
> ii  libinput-bin                1.5.0-1      armhf        input device management and event handling library - udev quirks
> ii  libinput10:armhf            1.5.0-1      armhf        input device management and event handling library - shared library
> ii  xserver-xorg-input-libinput 0.20.0-1     armhf        X.Org X server -- libinput input driver
> 
> > 
> > "it is failing" is a bit generic, what exactly doesn't work?
> 
> The XServer does not start -- I type startx, and after a brief startup blather
> and a brief screen blanking, it lands back at the shell prompt. The log file
> is all I have. Yes, it appears that XServer sees everything, but for some
> reason just exits after it has finished probing... No "obvious" (to me) reason
> (I have seen Xservers die for various reasons, like bad video timing rates on
> unsupported video chips, or totally missing mice and/or keyboards -- mostly in
> the "bad old days" where one had to set things up properly in
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf. I believe these days, one does not bother with
> hand-crafter conf files -- the XServer figures itself out "on the fly". (Or
> not as the case might be...)

OK, another datapoint:

*I* don't use the "pi" account on my pis -- I create an account "heller" so 
make things consistent with my other Linux boxes (an x86_64 home built desktop 
and a x86_64 Lenovo Thinkpad laptop).

When I log into the 'Pi as "pi", startx works.  It does not work when I log in 
as heller.  This is *weird* (at least from this long time Linux user).

> 
> > 
> > Cheers,
> >    Peter
> > 
> >                                 
> 

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