[tlinux-users:07681] Re: Ubuntu on Satellite A105

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:20:39 -0500
"Gregg Winston" <[email protected]> wrote:

> recommended sets of parameters, but have had no success as of yet.  Startup
> of Gnome display manager fails.
> 
This is ambiguous, Gregg.  Is X not starting or is Gnome not starting?

The way you tell is that X starts if you get a black or grey screen with an X in the center (which should respond to your mouse).  If you didn't get this far when you started, look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log (or something similar) to see what it tells you.  If you can't figure it out yourself, post here.

If X started but Gnome did not, then then this is a different problem.  And in my experience harder to troubleshoot.  What is the startup sequence for ubuntu (not familiar with that particular distribution ... and they differ)?  Is there an .xinitrc file in your directory?  If so, what's it say (should only be one line)?
	One way to troubleshoot is to boot X (assuming that's not the problem) and use a different window manager to see if it comes up (ice, kde, evilwm, fluxbox ... there are a ton of them out there).


Another suggestion to triage is to grab a live CD (puppy, DSL, Knoppix, FreeSBIE ...) and run it up.  Does X and the window manager for these work?  Puppy uses jwm as current default; DSL uses, I think, ICE, Knoppix uses kde, FreesBIE allows ICE or XFCE.  That should give you some clues regarding what's not the problem.

Help?