Re: a very persistant xdm

Chris Green (greenc@fnal.gov)
Tue, 17 Aug 1999 15:35:20 -0500 (CDT)

> When I try to kill xdm as root, it dies and immediately restarts
> itself as another process. I can't keep it dead long enough to
> try to start xdm by hand and try to get my friendly login screen
> back.

Hi,

It's being restarted by that most persistent of processes, init. You need
(as root) to do the following:

telinit 1

to take you down to single-user mode, followed by:

telinit 3

(if desired) to come back up to multiuser mode with no xdm. It is
important that you always go via runlevel one, otherwise the start and
stop scripts in each run level will end up trying to restart things which
are already running. Not *usually* fatal, but you can get undefined and/or
undesirable behaviour.

Hope this helps you diagnose your problem. The most likely explanation is
(I'm guessing, here) that you installed Accelerated X, or something,
without selecting the minimum install. As a result, you've overwritten
large chunks of your X installation with something that is 6 years old.
The solution in this case is to uninstall Accelerated X, re-install
XFree86, and then install Accelerated X again, this time selecting the
minimum install. You will also need to move a few links to the X-server
around so that you use Xwrapper properly.

Since you're in CDF, if you have any trouble with this, call me on x2308.

Cheers,
Chris.

>
> Any ideas what's wrong? Thanks.
>
> Stephen
>
> 

-- 
Chris Green. HEP, Purdue University. CDF SVXII project. 
Based at Fermilab. MAIL greenc@fnal.gov; PHONE (630) 840-2308