A few weeks ago I installed Etch RC1 on a Toshiba Tecra 8000 P2 laptop. The installation itself went without hitch, and I set about customizing it to my taste and installing various applications. For example I replaced Gnome with KDE, as I had been using KDE since I converted to Linux and don't want at this stage to lean a new desktop environment.
Then, on 6 February -- completely out of the blue -- I booted the computer, which I had set to log on automatically to my user. Instead however of seeing the KDE desktop, I got an xterm screen, which I assumed was a fail-safe xterm session. When I tried to use it, it did not respond; the machine hung. I was however able to log in, both as root and my user, on the ordinary terminals, ctl-alt-F1 to F6. It seems to me that the xserver-xorg is broken somehow. I tried aptitude from the command line but could find no broken packages. The only configuration option I know about is "dkpg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" which was of no help. Another change I noticed that on this fatal boot-up, both the avahi-daemon, whatever that is, and the HP linux printing and imaging system failed to load. To make matters worse, an hour later I booted my desktop and met with the same result: a fail-safe terminal emulator and a hung machine. This failure happened to a P4 box on which I had installed Sarge and KDE in June 2005 when Sarge first came out. Other than a few glitches encountered on initial installation, it has worked perfectly ever since. In this case I was also able to access the box from a native terminal, and so was able to write to zip750 disks all my document files. Again I used aptitude from the command line and also found no broken packages, this time the x-server being xfree86 rather than xorg. I did however discover that aptitude wanted to upgrade xserver-xfree86 to xserver-xfree86-dbg and also upgrade some of the dependencies. Two lines of the syslog read as follows: Feb 8 09:04:41 localhost kdm_greet[2943]: Can't open default user face Feb 8 09:04:47 localhost kdm: :0[2948]: Session "/etc/kde3/kdm/Xsession" execution failed: Permission denied Unfortunately however I was unable to do any upgrades, because on this boot-up the the operating system -- for the first time ever -- was unable to connect to the LAN. As always, the NIC was detected and the driver installed. It could not connect to the network. The system tried to connect to the network five times, each time reporting "Network is down", when I knew it was not. My first instinct was to check the hardware. The card was properly seated in the mainboard, and all the cables and connections worked with another computer and the print server. I swapped the NIC with another one of the same make and model from another desktop. The one swapped to that other desktop worked. The desktop previously reporting "network is down" still so reports with the swapped NIC which had worked before in the other desktop. The LAN, by the way, is restricted to our residence where only two desktops, one laptop, a print server and a gateway-switch are connected to it. This installation is only ever used by my spouse and me. It is particularly serious that both my previously operational computers failed at the same time. Fortunately I had a third desktop, on which no operating system had been installed. My first task was to install Etch RC1 on it so I had access to the web and could send and receive e-mails and install my document files on it. The necessity to make these installations accounts for the delay in reporting my problem to the Debian user list. My first priority is to get the laptop with Etch on it working again, as I am departing a week hence on an extended trip where I will need it. But I would like to get the desktop with Sarge working again too. I will be grateful to anybody who can tell me how to do so. Regards, Ken Heard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]