X11 Xserver startup problem on a Raspberry PI

[walter harms]

Am 27.06.2017 03:03, schrieb Robert Heller:
> At  Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>> 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).
>>
> 
> OK, problem solved: it was a bad .xsession file.  It has been so long since I 
> needed to troubleshoot a .xsession that I had forgotten to check there.  
>

could you elaborate that a bit ?
When a .xsession causes "could not write pid to lock file in /tmp/.tX1-lock"
Then it sounds not very helpful, may be that can be changed.

re,
 wh