From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Is starting xdm enough to see something in X?
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 21:54:42 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <200905222154.43057.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <5bdc1c8b0905221219v577413b4mbb656b122fdb3232@mail.gmail.com>
On Friday 22 May 2009 21:19:40 Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Matt Harrison
>
> <iwasinnamuknow@genestate.com> wrote:
> > Mark Knecht wrote:
> >> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:49 AM, bn <brullonulla@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Mark Knecht ha scritto:
> >>>> Title sort of says it. I have an old machine that I'm setting up as a
> >>>> Myth server. I didn't want X on the machine but I'm having trouble so
> >>>> I emerged xdm and start it using /etc/init.d/xdm start. The drivers
> >>>> get loaded but I get a black screen. No error message in the X log
> >>>> file.
> >>>>
> >>>> I haven't messed with X at this level before. What's the minimum test
> >>>> of X that would display a terminal or something very basic?
> >>>
> >>> Have you tried
> >>>
> >>> startx /usr/bin/xterm
> >>
> >> Yes. Same black screen. Nothing else going on. The processes show up
> >> in ps aux, X as root, xterm as me.
> >
> > I've found before that if everything seems to be running (can list X
> > processes and logs look fine) but you still don't see anything, it's
> > possible it is your monitor. I used to use a really old 15" CRT for a
> > server but it just wouldn't run X at anything over 640x480. Modern
> > monitors will at least tell you if the resolution/refresh is out of
> > limits, but older ones don't often. Try with a different monitor if that
> > one is old or suspect.
> >
> > ~Matt
>
> Good point. I'll hook the machine up to a very good monitor later today.
> Thanks.
You need to run an X-server, not the one that is displaying xdm because that
will only run xdm and once you authenticate will launch an entirely different
session. Either launch the failsafe session, it gives you twm on gentoo with a
single xterm, or ditch xdm and run startx.
You can also run xinit (startx is a wrapper script around xinit that launches
user-defined apps) and that gives you plain X without a window manager so you
need to put at least xterm into .xinitrc
> One question about this X stuff. Is there any difference at all at the
> application level if I run an app displaying on the monitor of that
> machine, or use ssh -X -Y -C and run the app displaying on a remote
> machine?
No difference whatsoever for basic apps. X is network transparent, meaning
that the X client reads and writes a Unix socket, TCP socket, or whatever else
you can dream up. However, I'm sure you will find that recent fancy stuff like
compiz and OpenGL don't work as expected.
> If there is absolutely no difference then I don't need to bother with
> this. If there is then I do. The real issue here is that Myth doesn't
> work. If I can be certain that displaying Myth apps on a remote
> screen, such as mythtv-setup or mythfrontend, is really the same then
> I'll just do that. However those apps are currently failing so I'm
> trying to eliminate issues, and possibly creating one I don't care
> about in doing that!
Running X apps locally locally tests your X libs and your X server.
Running X apps remotely tests the X libs
:-)
--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2009-05-22 19:56 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2009-05-22 18:26 [gentoo-user] Is starting xdm enough to see something in X? Mark Knecht
2009-05-22 18:49 ` bn
2009-05-22 18:55 ` Mark Knecht
2009-05-22 19:08 ` Matt Harrison
2009-05-22 19:19 ` Mark Knecht
2009-05-22 19:54 ` Alan McKinnon [this message]
2009-05-22 20:46 ` Mark Knecht
2009-05-22 21:01 ` Daniel da Veiga
2009-05-22 21:12 ` Mark Knecht
2009-05-22 21:39 ` Daniel da Veiga
2009-05-23 20:06 ` Neil Bothwick
2009-05-23 20:59 ` Mark Knecht
2009-05-22 18:53 ` Dale
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=200905222154.43057.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com \
--to=alan.mckinnon@gmail.com \
--cc=gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox