re-building X

[spacedog]

Hello,

I have a gnome desktop for my X windows system. It is acting real funny, do to what i did to GDM configurator. I would like to remove and re-install all graphics on my linux installation. I figure if i do this, I could have the default gnome sessions, default desktop and I will be able to login as my users. I have 2 questions

1. How do i accomplish this?

2. Will i lose any user accounts?

thank you
spacedog

Im going to have to do this, unless someone knows anything about GDM, I have searched the net and found people with my problem but i couldent find the solution.

[GaryJones32]

hi,

try this -- don't know if it will work

as root

go to /ect/X11/gdm

backup gdm.conf
cp gdm.conf gdm.config.old
then replace it with factory-gdm.conf
cp factory-gdm.conf gdm.config

see if that gets you back to some sane place.

[spacedog]

hi

already tried that, no change. Can I just completely remove X. then reinstall it

[GaryJones32]

i guess as long as you do it from the terminal without x running.
but i bet there is nothing wrong with x itself.
startx is faster than gdm and it's very usefull to be able to login at the terminal and be kicked back to the terminal if x won't start
have you tried dissabiling gdm and using startx from the terminal ?
with startx
xinit gathers up arguments for startup from various files through the startx script (it's human readable)-- if they are not present then it looks to system defaults and then loads with the settings in
XFree86Config-4 or whatever it is
with startx you can also get error messages that might help diagnose

what exactly is hapening as best as you can decribe it ?

you can also run whatever you got there to configure x like when you first installed from the pre x terminal.. but that's more about monitor and video settings than anything else..

[spacedog]

hello

well changed run-level to 3 and tried to use startx but it didnt work. Maybe this error message will help us a little

Fatal server error:
PAM authentication failed, cannot start X server.
Perhaps you do not have console ownership?

When reporting a problem related to a server crash, please send the full server output not just the last message.
Please report problems to xfree86@xfree86.org

giving up,

xinit: No such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3) Server error

I am going to send this to the above email and see what I get. But does anyone know what to do about this?
spacedog

[GaryJones32]

i'm lost now.
(he says as if he wasn't lost before)
there is an encryption key in your home directory in a file
named .Xauthority it is created with PAM
this lets you log into the x server even remotely using ssh.

if you type

xauth list

you should see your MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1

sounds like your is corrupted but i'm just guessing ????

you can try

xauth generate :0 .

the peroid above is part of the command

don't know if that will help though ?????

i think i would try to create a new user account and use that !
you can copy the stuff you need from your old account or change permissions on the old folder so you can get at it.

is root also all screwed up or just your user account ???????