Nov 3, 2026 5:15:19 AM Greg Wooledge <[email protected]> > > On Tue, Nov 03, 2026 at 06:34:02 -0500, Dan Ritter wrote: >> Donald MacDougall wrote: >> > All I did after typing 'startx' (as me, not root) resulting in the black >> > screen was press ^Alt and the first 6 function keys none of which did >> > anything at all followed by Fn Alt and the function keys which also had no >> > effect, then I quick tapped the power key. That caused a normal shutdown >> > with a rapid scrolling up the screen of the normal shutdown messages and >> > then the computer powered off. > > If you never use lightdm to login, then I recommend you purge it. > Having it present but inactive may be causing confusion. If you want > to start using it later, you can just install it then.
I uninstalled lightdm. One thing that changed after uninstalling it is that it eliminated the line from the ~.xsession-errors file that said: 'Failed to connect to the session manager: SESSION_MANAGER environment variable not defined' >> "startx" starts X11. >> >> Somewhere in the log file that you didn't copy will be the clue >> about what caused X11 to stop. > I think you are right. There are things in that log file that are important clues and I think I will try to send it by ssh to my wife's computer and then include it in an email to this list. It may take a day or two to manage to do it. > To be clear, the log files in question would be: > > ~/.xsession-errors # for the X11 client applications > ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log # for the X11 server, normally > or > /var/log/Xorg.0.log # for the X11 server, legacy mode > >> You should read the man pages for "startx" and "xinit". > > I mean... yeah, in theory? Probably won't help much immediately. > I've read them. Not everything I read sticks. >> You say that you do not have a .xinitrc in your home directory. >> Try creating it with this line in it as the only content: >> >> xfce4-session >> >> Then run startx and tell us what happens. > > In Debian specifically, ~/.xsession is preferred over ~/.xinitrc > because the former is used by both startx *and* the various display > managers. > > When I asked my web browser's search agent for the magic command to > start XFCE, the results I got said startxfce4 instead of xfce4-session, > so I have no idea which one's right. Maybe both. Maybe neither. > I don't know. The Arch Linux wiki > <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xfce__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!rMxtXo0eGWzdJ84lAXeVpdEWmIAdpbjGI5MvRIFpoY5x7P_bkXB8iOsM61BANXolC_td_nRrpe0HZg$> > says to use startxfce4 and they're usually a good source. > > Before committing one of them to the file system, you should be able to > test each one in turn: > > startx startxfce4 > startx xfce4-session I've tried both, and also "startx start xfce4" just in case the missing space was a typo. All three did exactly the same thing which is to print out the 14 lines beginning with: "X.Org X Server 1.21.1.16" And ending with: "waiting for the X server to shut down (II) Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file.te path found for shell: xfce4-sessioninit: connection to X server lost" This last line has changed since I ran the command before. Perhaps because of uninstalling lightdm? Maybe some other change? > Of course, that assumes you have a working X server, which at this point > is still in question. > > If you *just* want to test the X server, what I would do is: > > apt-get install xterm > startx xterm > > That should give you a GUI display with a moving mouse cursor, and a > single 80x24 terminal window in the upper left corner. Moving the > cursor into the terminal window should allow you to type in it. > Moving the cursor out of the window should remove focus, and typing > will no longer do anything. The cursor within the terminal window > should change from solid to hollow depending on where the focus is. > > Run the "exit" command in the window to terminate the session. > > If that doesn't work, then the X server is malfunctioning, and you'll > need to look at the X server logs (paths shown above) to find out why. > (Either that, or xterm is malfunctioning, which would be unlikely.) xterm was already installed so running "startx xterm" does exactly as you described. > Oh, and just for good measure, I would run "df -h" on this system and > make sure none of the file systems are full. > df -h tells me that / has 92G and everything else seems to have plenty of headroom as well. Don
