Ok, it is not the vesafb. It seems strange to me that this happens since update to 2.6.17-8, because changes to agp/drm-portions of kernel-code are documented for 2.6.17-9. Even with broken kernel-drm-code, X normally should start up disabeling dri-part automatically.
What completely seems strange to me is, that you say that a forced startx or sudo /etc/init.d/kdm restart works in some situations. How does the Xorg.0.log-file look like when you issue startx as mentioned earlier? The attached file from Comment #8 shows, that X obiously hangs while trying to allocate graphics-memory (at least the log ends there, no further comments in log after that, what seems strange to me, too). Does the whole system crash in this situation? What says the syslog file? Can you still boot in a sane state when dri is disabled? -- [Regression] 2.6.17-8-generic makes X crash if DRI is enabled in xorg.conf https://launchpad.net/bugs/61979 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs