[PLUG] Now I've done it

[Carlos Konstanski]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009, John Jason Jordan wrote:

> Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:52:20 -0800
> From: John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net>
> Reply-To: "General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;	civil and on-topic"
>     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> To: plug at lists.pdxlinux.org
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Now I've done it
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions. I'm still not functional, but I did things
> and stuff happened.
>
> First, still booted into the Karmic live CD I created an ~/.xinitrc
> file (none existed before) and put "exec gnome-session" in it. Then I
> rebooted to the regular boot option in Grub. Result: No change; that
> is, mouse and keyboard worked, but no window manager and no gnome-panel.
>
> Next I booted to Recovery Mode and logged in as root. I installed
> xfce4, then edited jjj's .xinitrc file by changing the line to "exec
> xfce4-session." Then I switched user to jjj and did cd to my home
> folder. And then I did startx. Result: When X came up I had panels and
> a desktop, but no mouse or keyboard. There was a popup message "failed
> to initialize HAL."
>
> For my third exercise I shut down (had to use the power button) then
> restarted to the regular session. After logging in as jjj I got the
> same blank Gnome desktop without a panel or window manager.
>
> Not sure what this means.

What does your HAL policy file for keyboard and mouse look like?

/etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-X11-input.fdi:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
     <device>
         <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
             <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">evdev</merge>
             <merge key="input.auto.repeat" type="string">500 30</merge>
             <merge key="input.xkb.rules" type="string">xorg</merge>
             <merge key="input.xkb.model" type="string">pc101</merge>
             <merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">us</merge>
         </match>
         <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.mouse">
             <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">evdev</merge>
         </match>
     </device>
</deviceinfo>

Although since the keyboard and mouse work some of the time, I don't
think your HAL policy is at fault.

The description of your latest steps (above) does not mention removing
the xorg.conf file. Have you tried that?

I agree that Xorg.0.log is a great place to look. It's too big to post
here, but you could either post it on one of those tinyurl sites, or
email it to me and I'll put it up on my web server. It's a great log
file because it reports everything that happens when X starts, not
just those things that are "errors".

Carlos