graphical login screen?

tuclogicguy · posted: 2013-01-05 05:33

I have antiX-12 installed in a spare partitition on my hard disk. It starts up and seems to run OK; and, after following the suggestions from anticapitalista, have it configured so it doesn't change my hardware clock from local time to UTC.

Now my question: is this thing supposed to display a graphical login screen on initial boot? Some of the last messages that appear before the login prompt are:
INIT: Entering runlevel: 5
Starting X display manager: slim

But, slim doesn't appear start. It stays in console mode. I can enter my username and password and get logged in, still in console mode. Then I enter"startx" and the icewm desktop comes up and works normally.

I did some investigation into how slim is configured. I discovered that the only slim theme that came installed is"antiX". From a command prompt, I tried typing:
slim -p /usr/share/slim/themes/antiX
and the antiX theme is displayed and I can go through the motions of entering my username and password. After that, it displays a test message for a few seconds and then exits back to the command prompt. So, it appears that slim basically works. Why doesn't it appear on initial log in?

Charles

anticapitalista · posted: 2013-01-05 10:33

Several users have this issue and I guess it is hardware related probably down to drivers. Someone installed the non-free drivers for their card and it worked. Others reinstalled slim with success. Others made changes to the boot menu by adding/removung cheats.

Dave · posted: 2013-01-05 12:20

anticapitalista wrote:Several users have this issue and I guess it is hardware related probably down to drivers. Someone installed the non-free drivers for their card and it worked. Others reinstalled slim with success. Others made changes to the boot menu by adding/removung cheats.

The thing that has worked every time for me when i encounter this proplem is loging in as root and runing X -configure . then move the resulting root/xorg.conf.new to etc/X11/xorg.conf. Followed by restarting slim service slim restart

tuclogicguy · posted: 2013-01-05 18:09

I tried logging in as root and running"X -configure". It comes back with"Configuration failed". I looked at /var/log/Xorg.0.log and near the bottom, just before the Configuration failed message, is this message,
"Number of created screens does not match number of detected devices."

I noticed from the Xorg.0.log that it seems to be trying a huge number of display drivers. Maybe it is getting confused as to which is the right one. I have an ATI Radeon card. Maybe I should remove all drivers except the Radeon one. I'm new to this distro and I'm not sure how to do that.

tuclogicguy · posted: 2013-01-05 19:20

I think I am getting to the bottom of why slim won't display on initial boot. If I login and check /var/log/Xorg.0.log, before I issue startx, I see that the boot process tried to start X and failed. That is why slim doesn't come up. Here is the last portion of Xorg.0.log:

Code: Select all

[    17.106] (EE) RADEON(0): [dri] RADEONDRIGetVersion failed because of a version mismatch.
[dri] This chipset requires a kernel module version of 1.17.0,
[dri] but the kernel reports a version of 2.17.0.[dri] Make sure your module is loaded prior to starting X, and
[dri] that this driver was built with support for KMS.
[dri] Aborting.
[    17.107] (II) UnloadModule:"radeon"
[    17.107] (II) UnloadSubModule:"int10"
[    17.107] (II) Unloading int10
[    17.107] (II) UnloadSubModule:"vgahw"
[    17.107] (II) Unloading vgahw
[    17.107] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
[    17.107]
Fatal server error:
[    17.107] no screens found
[    17.107]
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
         at http://wiki.x.org
 for help.
[    17.107] Please also check the log file at"/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
[    17.107]
[    17.213] Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
~

What is strange is that once I am logged in and then enter startx, X starts up OK and the icewm desktop comes up and runs normally. So, something must be different about the system environment before and after I login that allows X to work after I'm logged in.

tuclogicguy · posted: 2013-01-05 20:43

I tried doing a dist-upgrade. (Wow! tons of stuff got updated.) slim still doesn't start on initial boot. Same error trying to load the Radeon driver:

Code: Select all

[    17.057] (EE) RADEON(0): [dri] RADEONDRIGetVersion failed because of a version mismatch.
[dri] This chipset requires a kernel module version of 1.17.0,
[dri] but the kernel reports a version of 2.17.0.[dri] Make sure your module is loaded prior to starting X, and
[dri] that this driver was built with support for KMS.

anticapitalista · posted: 2013-01-05 21:08

It is because you are running an up to date linux on an old box. Now I'm not sure how to fix it except to try installing non-free radeon drivers via smxi/sgfxi (I'm not sure that is even possible) or using a different login manager such as lightdm, wdm

tuclogicguy · posted: 2013-01-06 01:33

It's strange that the radeon drivers work when I login in from console mode and enter startx, but not when slim is starting.

slim works with Arch Linux on this same box.

Dave · posted: 2013-01-06 03:38

even though X -confiure gives a number of screens error, there should be a resulting xorg.conf that you you can copy to etc/ X11/ it should work, but if it does not you can edit it to work.

tuclogicguy · posted: 2013-01-07 14:42

I tried trimming down the xorg.conf that X -configure creates, deleting the extra screens and drivers other than radeon. Moved it to etc/X11. No difference. X still fails to start on the first attempt. Since, X fails to start on the first attempt, but always starts when I enter startx after logging in, I decided to just change the initial runlevel to 3, instead of 5. So, now antiX stays in console mode to the login prompt. Then I discovered something strange. I login and type startx and X fails to start. I type startx again and it always works on the second attempt. It happens every time. X fails to start on the first attempt but starts on the second attempt. I don't change anything in between, just type startx twice. It is using the same etc/X11/xorg.conf each time. I also get essentially the same results with no xorg.conf file; it just tries a few other drivers before it settles on radeon. (I attached the two log files for comparison, in case someone want to look at them for possible ideas of a solution.)

frogprince · posted: 2013-02-02 19:20

tuclogicguy: I had this same and other problems, and fixed all of them by replacing my Radeon card with an nVidia. When I did, slim started to load at boot, synaptic showed up in the menu, smix ran successfully, etc.etc.etc. I don't know why Antix doesn't like Radeon, but see:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4008

Good luck!