On Wed, Jan 28, at 08:40 Dan Nicholson wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 6:15 AM, Agathoklis D. Hatzimanikas
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> 
> This one is tough because there are a lot of ways it can fail. If
> copying old fonts into the same path that was giving you problems
> works, then that probably means that something in the font toolchain
> was broken during the installation. That usually means bdftopcf,
> mkfontdir or mkfontscale. I think you want to have font-alias and
> encodings installed before you start installing any fonts since
> mkfontdir/mkfontscale operate on them. One thing to keep in mind is
> that you have to run mkfontdir/mkfontscale post-install if you're
> using a DESTDIR.
>

Oh yes, I think that is, it's probably a DESTDIR thing, as it was my
first installation using DESTDIR.

> > 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).
> 
> The graphics locked, too, or just the input devices stopped
> responding? Usually if the computer locked, it's the graphics device
> getting wedged. Can you ssh in from another machine while this is
> happening? What chipset are you using? Can you post an Xorg.log from
> when this happened?
> 

It was just the input devices. I am able to ssh from another machine and
that's how I killed X and went back to a virtual console.
For your information here is a relevant part from  a working X:

X.Org X Server 1.5.3
Release Date: 5 November 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.27.6 i686 
Current Operating System: Linux AH 2.6.27.6 #3 SMP Wed Nov 19 08:30:17 EET 2008 
i686
Build Date: 27 January 2009  11:48:14PM
...
 
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Wed Jan 28 19:38:36 2009
(==) Using config file: "/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf"
(==) ServerLayout "Layout0"
(**) |-->Screen "Screen0" (0)
(**) |   |-->Monitor "Monitor0"
(**) |   |-->Device "NVIDIA Corporation NV40 [GeForce 6200 TurboCache]"
(**) |-->Input Device "Keyboard0"
(**) |-->Input Device "Mouse0"
(**) Option "AllowEmptyInput" "false"
(==) Automatically adding devices
(==) Automatically enabling devices

And here what is logged after commented out the option and starting xorg
with  "-logverbose 10"

(WW) AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using drivers 'kbd' or 'mouse' will be 
disabled.
(WW) Disabling Keyboard0
(WW) Disabling Mouse0

> >
> > 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
> 
> I haven't looked at the logic in a while, but I think that if the HAL
> config is not built, then the AllowEmptyInput setting shouldn't
> matter. I could be wrong on that, though, and there have certainly
> been recent commits to get this to work correctly more often.
>

I will be happy to check, maybe at the weekend a recent server snapshot.
 
> Another thing to consider is to just use evdev even for xorg.conf
> devices. There are very few devices left on Linux that don't work
> correctly with evdev.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Although a non-HAL xorg is becoming more rare, that configuration
> should be supported. There may be bugs in the logic on how to decide
> whether devices from xorg.conf are honored. This is xorg-server-1.5.3,
> right?

Yes 1.5.3. 
And another thing that I've remembered.
As I am a multi language environment I just don't know how I suppose to
change keyboard layout (see Xkboptions and XkbLayout), when in fact Xorg
(if I got it right) ignores the InputDevices sections.

> 
> > 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.
> 
> You can run Xorg with -logverbose N where N sets the verbosity level
> from 1-10. The default is 3. I don't know if this will be really
> informative for input devices, though.
> 

Thanks, I knew about this switch, but if a mis-configured 
xorg.conf or a missing dependency can result in such a lock out,
I would like - as a plain user - to be informed with some more verbosity
than usual, especially if it was (like this case) during a transition
from another subsystem to another.


And there it is.
It seems that many more people were locked out the same way,
since I just tested the "x-setup" page and I see a small paragraph about
the same issue - must be DJ that updated the page but it seems I lost it -

Regards,
Ag.
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