[vox-tech] debian woody to sarge upgrade = dead xserver

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Wed 25 Aug 04,  9:51 AM, Ashleigh Smythe <absmythe at ucdavis.edu> said:
> Kevin Murakoshi wrote:
> 
> >On a weird hunch what if you use "xinit" to start X instead of
> >"startx"? Maybe your window manager is fucking up....
> >
> >--kevin (i'll fix this, if it's the last thing i dooooo!!!)
> >
> 
> Sorry Kevin, the hunch didn't work - I get the same error.  I 
> appreciate your valiant efforts though!

Haven't been following this thread and the context has been snipped too
aggressively, but I'll try to chime in anyhow.

> One thing that is making me 
> think I should do a clean sarge install is that when I do dpkg -l, 
> there are loads of woody stuff still on my system - even lots of 
> woody X stuff - why wouldn't those have been upgraded to sarge? 

Can you post some specific examples (using dpkg -l) of packages that you
believe shouldn't be on a testing machine?

Also, please post "/etc/apt/sources.list".

> Could it be that my upgrade was not as successful as I think and I 
> have a mixed installation?  I can't really think of any reason not to 
> just do a clean install - I have the CD's so it should be pretty 
> easy.

Reasons not to reinstall:

1. It's the wrong paradigm.  Installing an OS is a major event.  Microsoft
   has trivialized it.  Reboot.  Reinstall.  Microsoft is the embodyment
   of the sickening American sentiment that if it doesn't work, toss it
   and buy another one.  Never reinstall except under extraordinary
   circumstances.

2. It's the perfect opportunity to learn.  Don't lose it!

3. Fixing is a confidence builder.

> I guess that wouldn't uncover the reason why the upgrade 
> didn't work, but frankly my dissertation has to be finished by 
> December and I need a working system ASAP.
 
Oops.   This is an extraordinary circumstance.  I assume this is an X problem
(it's generally not good to snip technical threads).  Send
/var/log/XFree86.0.log to me via private email and I'll try to help.

Pete

-- 
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