On Mon 28 May 2007 16:17:44 NZST +1200, Carl Cerecke wrote: > Most of the time, if I can get back to a console, I can get X > restarted without reboot. This is using an intel chipset on my laptop.
In theory, restarting X should be all that's needed. The easier way for doing that is to run init 3 init 5 from a console as root. In practice, switching between graphics screen and consoles, and restarting the graphics, heavily involves the graphics card hardware. If the graphics driver is crappy, as is the proven case here in this thread, it may fail to reinitialise the hardware properly, in which case neither switching consoles nor restarting ?dm will produce anything much more than an expanse of black. Worse, since it's partially in kernel space (is is still these days?), it can crash burn and smoke the whole kernel and everything on top as well. So, with crappy graphics drivers, rebooting is commonly the only option. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
