On 14/09/18 19:54, Adam Jackson wrote: > On Fri, 2018-09-14 at 18:46 +0100, John Talbut wrote: >> Thanks Adam >> >> If I boot to runlevel 3, log into tty1 as root and run 'X -retro' the UI >> locks up. > > When this happens, does VT switch still work? Can you hit control-alt- > backspace to terminate the server?
No, if I run 'X -retro' from tty1 as root the screen goes black apart from a steady underscore top left and the keyboard is unresponsive, or at least nothing changes on the screen when I press any keys. >If yes (and the answer to both > should be the same) then the server is "alive" but something about > changing the video mode has gone awry, so that where the server is > drawing is not where the hardware is looking. > > This would probably be a kernel bug, probably in the gma500 driver, > which is not a great place to be as the driver is essentially > unmaintained afaik. dri-de...@lists.freedesktop.org would be the most > likely place to find help, and they would probably want to see dmesg > from a boot with 'drm.debug=0x7' on the kernel command line for the > details of the attempted modeset, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. Would anything have changed recently with this driver? The computer was working fine until late July. > > Alternatively, you can try booting with 'nomodeset' on the kernel > command line, which should disable the gma500 driver. X will then use > the vesa driver, which is normally not a great place to be either, but > the gma500 driver's only real advantage over vesa is hotplug support as > neither one has any hardware acceleration. > >> 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: > > This is just the security checks in the server preventing you from > running it as a regular user (on the theory that, if anyone on the > system could start a display server, you could spoof an existing > session). > >> 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 you can ssh in, you can scp files out... > > - ajax > > _______________________________________________ xorg@lists.x.org: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: https://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: %(user_address)s