Hi,
On a recent Lfs build (a copy of a middle December) I've installed
(with no problems) the latest Xorg release 7.4 by following book
instructions.
But when I've tried to log in X, I've faced some problems:
The first error was about that "RgbPath" wasn't not a valid keyword.
By commenting out the relevant line I was able to continue.
The second one was about the "record" module, I did the same as before
and I was able to continue.
The third one was the famous error "couldn't find default font fixed",
and although I've done all the usual steps, I wasn't able to fix this,
so I just cheated and by blatantly copied the fonts from an old working
system I was able to continue. I don't know exactly the reason for this
failure, both the "font-alias" and "bdftopcf" packages was installed
properly with no error.
The fourth is basically the reason for this email, so the solution can be
archived for reference to people with the same problem.
Now, when I've tried to log in X, my computer just locked. I couldn't
use the mouse, I couldn't use the keyboard to switch to virtual consoles,
so basically it left nothing else other than a hard reset (after years
without one, that was an unpleasant experience).
I've looked to the Xorg log but I couldn't find an obvious reason for
this, so and because I wanted to be sure first (before to start
reporting) I fall back to the know good versions of Xorg to see if they
are working on the same exact system and apparently they did.
I've then tried to build Xorg without Mesa, but I've had the same hard lock.
So, I've started to look in the Xorg lists and I've found two similar
problems within the last days. The solution was pretty easy, I just wanted
to put to the "ServerFlags" section the following line:
Option "AllowEmptyInput" "false"
>From man xorg.conf:
======================================================================
Option "AllowEmptyInput" "boolean"
If enabled, don't add the standard keyboard and mouse drivers,
if there are no input devices in the config file. Enabled by
default if AutoAddDevices and AutoEnableDevices is enabled, oth-
erwise disabled. If AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using the
kbd or mouse driver are ignored
======================================================================
As I understand it, this is actually a feature.
I think (not sure) Xorg uses Hal for (keyboard and mouse) auto detection.
But as I didn't have Hal installed that (feature) transformed into a bug.
This also happened even if I explicitly passed to the "xorg server" configure
options the "--disable-config-hal" switch, plus also configure doesn't
find hal in $PATH, see:
Checking for HAL... no
Dan,
If I am right and I haven't done any mistake other than I don't want to
use Hal, is it possible over in Xorg, to do something to prevent this from
happening? Maybe a conditional check that could raise even a fatal error?
For me that would be acceptable; I'd rather have one than to have locked
from using the computer at all.
Additionally a little more generosity in verbosity would me more than
welcomed, so users can spot more easily these kind of problems, a "big
fat warning" or something like that.
Regards,
Ag.
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