Black screen, UI lock up, when starting Xserver,

[John Talbut]

Thanks Adam

If I boot to runlevel 3, log into tty1 as root and run 'X -retro' the UI
locks up.

If I boot to runlevel 3, log into tty2 as a user and run 'X -retro' the
tty stays live and I get some messages:

(EE)
Fatal server error:
(EE) parse_vt_setting: Cannot open /dev/tty0 (Permission denied)
(EE)
(EE)
(EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log
file.l/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.

The latter log file also has a couple of lines:
(WW) xf86CloseConsole: KDSETMODE failed: Bad file descriptor
(WW) xf86CloseConsole: VT_GETMODE failed: Bad file descriptor

There do not seem to be any other errors.

It is a bit difficult to send whole log files as I do not have an email
client on the machine without the desktop.  If there is anything in
particular to check or further tests, let me know.

John



On 14/09/18 18:09, Adam Jackson wrote:
> On Thu, 2018-09-13 at 19:21 +0100, John Talbut wrote:
> 
>> The only errors that show in Xorg.0.log are:
>>
>> [  420,876](EE) modeset(0): [DRI2] No driver mapping found for PCI
>> device 0x8086 / 0x0be1
>> [  42.877] (EE) modeset(0): Failed to initialize the DRI2 extension
>>
>> I.e. the graphic controller is a VGA compatible controller: Intel
>> Corporation Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx Integrated Graphics Controller
>> (rev 09)
>>
>> Questions, for a start:
>> 1. What is supposed to provide the mapping for PCI device 0x8086 / 0x0be1?
> 
> There's a table built into the X server. In this case, you have the
> misfortune to own a Cedarview chip, which is of the Poulsbo family of
> "not really Intel, actually PowerVR" of devices and thus there is no
> open source 3D support. That the code considers this an "error"
> condition is perhaps unwarranted.
> 
>> 2. Is this error likely to be causing the UI to lock up?
> 
> Probably not, no. The fact that lightdm seems to be restarting makes me
> suspect there is some other error in the X log that simply doesn't
> begin with (EE). The complete log might be useful. It's possible that
> what's really happening is the _session_ is failing to initialize, and
> the X server is terminating normally because the last client
> disconnected.
> 
> A quick thing to check is to run 'X -retro' from a vt. If that brings
> up the classic root weave and X pointer, then X is working fine and the
> session is to blame. You may need to boot to runlevel 3 to test this,
> as otherwise lightdm would win the race.
> 
> - ajax
> 
>