How to recover X display? v.1.1

[Josef Lowder]

Lisa, thank you profusely for all of your "far beyond the extra mile"
efforts to help me solve this matter.  I will get back to work on this
asap and follow all of your suggestions.  It may take me a while to
get back to this because this laptop is not a mission-critical unit
and I have to get caught up on my regular work on my old reliable
computer before I resume work on trying to get the laptop going again.

Again, I sincerely appreciate all of your help!

Many, many thanks.

Joe


On 3/24/09, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold at obnosis.com> wrote:
>
>  Corrections in red:
>
>  Not exactly....
> I apologise, I was reading for context, and make sense from within a wealth
> of 22 years of Nix experience.
> The link is describing difficulty with v41/ABI drivers within Virtualbox
> booting into X via PCLinuxOS.  When you build a virtualbox client, the
> xdrivers modules are created also; sometimes when one installs Virtualbox
> (and/or Xen), they decide to run their first system in a virtual under the
> OS, which is then described as primary in the grub configuration via the new
> kernel that was built during install (which might cause an X and kernel
> module mismatch).  For instance under Redhat/XEN this is usually what is
> called a PAE kernel.  You, after installing Virtualbox, verified that you
> are still running the same kernel from grub.conf?  You can also look at the
> file creation date for the kernel that is indicated to boot first into the
> grub configuration.
> Post installation of Virtualbox, your Xorg logs say what?
>
> If I remember correctly Xorg was whining we needed a couple of video
> modules?  Irregardless of whether you are now running in a VirtualBox or
> not:
>
> a) boot fails to go to X
> b) you can't startx
> Solutions:
>
> 1) You can try to boot into your system and reconfigure your X drivers via
> command line?
> First try this:
> # sudo Xconfigurator
> You can try to configure your monitor and video card for X via this utility.
> Might work, it's worth a try...[but not highly probable].
>
> 2) Update/upgrade your system, although this might have been what caused it.
>  There are some major differences between the way that X uses kernel drivers
> for video cards in recent versions.
> http://distrowatch.com/index.php?distribution=all&month=all&year=2009
>
> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get upgrade
>
> 3) Kernel modules and X drivers
> Your Xorg errors talked about two drivers:
> module ABI major version (1) doesn't match server's version (2)
> failed to load module "v41" (module requirement mismatch,0)
> # sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg
> 4) Revert your failed system
>
> If these questions do not make sense, and you can't either fix the driver
> errors or roll back the changes made adding virtualbox source, it would be
> easiest for you to just rebuild.  Download a new ISO from distrowatch (or a
> new OS) and burn it to CD (or DVD if you have that luxury) carefully
> selecting the i386/686 versions and drop the hammer on this failed learning
> project, and go on to bigger and better things!
> After you rebuild your shiny new system, keep your BUILD DVD/CD, so you can
> use it to boot emergency for trouble/rebuild.  Always keep a record of all
> steps that are done, (especially updates, etc. and test between upgrade
> installation steps) for packaging the issues for others.
>
> 5) If all this fails, take your box back to the InstallFesters and/or call
> one of us.
>
> Obnosis | (503)754-4452
>  PLUG Linux Security Labs 2nd Saturday Each Month at Noon - 3PM
>
>
> > Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:38:32 -0700
> > Subject: Re: How to recover X display?
> > From: joe at actionline.com
> > To: plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> >
> > Now, I'm even more thoroughly confused.
> >
> > On 3/23/09, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold at obnosis.com> wrote:
> > >
> http://reformedmusings.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/installing-sun-virtualbox-6-guest-additions-in-linux-guests/
> >
> > This is describing installing PCLinuxOS as a virtual machine inside a
> > working Ubuntu-VirtualBox setup ... which doesn't seem to have
> > anything to do with trying to get my installed PCLinuxOS system X
> > recovered.
> >
> > The article says: "Guest Additions installs from a CD iso file.
> >
> > I don't have any CD iso for this.
> >
> > The article then says: "So, we need to load the iso as a CD in our
> > virtual machine.
> > For this, the virtual machine must be shut down (powered off)."
> >
> > There is no way I can do this when my basic machine is not working.
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