How to recover X display?

[Matt Graham]

From: Josef Lowder <joe at actionline.com>
> Perhaps I'll just have to reinstall and risk losing my data as
> I don't know a way to get it copied off.

USB drive, shirley?

[kernel modules and GRUB conf, not the problem]
>> We might logically research the exact Xorg errors for these, spoze?
>> 3) Research our error for known solutions:
>> module ABI major version (1) doesn't match server's version (2)
>> failed to load module "v41" (module requirement mismatch,0)
> ("v41" above should have been "v4l"

This is an X problem IIRC.  The module being referred to is the X
module, not a kernel module.  Did X get upgraded at some point?
The thing that's messed up is /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/v4l_drv.*
AFAICT.  If you have any reference to v4l in your xorg.conf , then
edit that file and comment that line out.  Your webcam and/or TV
tuner will stop being able to use XV, but you'll get X back.  Also,

grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf
lspci | grep VGA

...will tell you which X module you're using and which graphics
card you have.  In fact, you should take your xorg.conf and put
it on your website somewhere, then follow up with a URL here.

> The problem seems to pertain mainly if not exclusively to the X server.
> I tried running '/usr/sbin/XFdrake' and it seems to show that everything
> is set correctly.

XFdrake... something Mandrake-specific?  Gah, most of these tools are
rather poorly debugged.

> Should I try to remove all files on the system pertaining to virtualbox?

This shouldn't have any effect on anything, but sure, try your distro's
equivalent of "yum remove virtualbox".  FWIW, I installed virtualbox
on my Thinkpad T42p a while back, and never had any problems with it
horking up suspend-to-RAM or doing anything weird to X.  Then again,
I'm using Gentoo, and YDistroMV.  HTH anyway,

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see