Unable to start xserver

[Fernando]

Hi there!
I'm having trouble with my system. All was nice and smooth and suddenly, when it boots, the screen stays black after Kubuntu logo. If I go to the command line by using CTRL+ALT+F1 and try to initiate xserver by typing xinit, it returns "server error". Among other things, it also says: "parse_vt_settings: cannot open /dev/tty0 (permission denied).
Any idea about how to fix this so system initiates normally?
Thanks in advance!

[Snowhog]

Try using: startx

[GreyGeek]

Or, startkde

But first, I'd check the owner of ~/.Xauthority
It sometimes gets changed to root when doing maintenance work on a system. If it is owned by root then you'll get a black screen when you attempt to log in.

If it is owned by you, as it should be, then perhaps your display configuration changed due to an update or something else.

What is your GPU?

[Fernando]

Hi.
Thanks for the help!

startx returned "xauth: timeout in locking ~/.Xauthority"
Then the screen went black for a while until finally returned a lot of lines in which it seemed like xserver attempted to start but, among other things, said "xf86EnableIOports: failed to set IOPL for I/O (Operation not permitted)".

startkde, on the other hand, returned: "$DISPLAY is not set or cannot connect to the x server".

I checked .Xauthority and the owner is root, but I didn't know how to change that. Anyway, the system doesn't even load the users login screen so I don't know if that is the problem...
According to lspci, my system GPU is a "Intel Corporation 4th generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)".

[Fernando]

Well, I found out how to change ownership of .Xauthority and did it. Then I did

sudo startx

and I got rid of the timeout problem and also got the mouse cursor on an otherwise totally black screen. I rebooted and nothing new happened: I am back where I was, a black screen. Ownership of .Xauthority has gone back to root so it makes me think that was not the problem.

[Fernando]

By the way, if I try xinit, it somewhere returns "...server already running".
If I try to kill it with xkill, it says "Unable to open display """ (the two first quotation marks belong to the actual message on the screen).

[Rod J]

The simplest way to fix the ownership of .Xauthority is to simply delete it. A new copy will be created when you reboot.

Use the following to remove the file:

sudo rm ~/.Xauthority

You can reboot from the terminal using:

sudo shutdown -r now

BTW, in your post above (#5) if you had simply used "startx" (no sudo) you probably would have fixed the problem.

[Fernando]

I completely (I guess) uninstalled and reinstalled xserver-xorg and kubuntu-desktop and regained ownership of .Xauthority. Then I did startx (no sudo) and got the mouse again. Unexpectedly, a window appeared asking permission for dropbox to change permission to its own folder. That's the only graphics I have got in two days.

Rod, I tried what you proposed but it didn't work.
I'm lost by now...

[Snowhog]

Sounds to me like your user /home directory is hosed; items in it owned by root and not your user. I say that because you did identify that .Xauthority was owned by root. 99.99+% of the contents in /home should NOT be owned by root. The way stuff in /home gets changed to ownership by root is running starting graphical applications from the konsole using sudo (sudo kate; sudo dolphin notably) and them making changes to files.

[GreyGeek]

In a Konsole issue:
sudo chown -R yourname:yourname /home/yourname

[Snowhog]

In a Konsole issue:
sudo chown -R yourname:yourname /home/yourname

Don’t type that litterally of course. Replace yourname with the username that you use to login with.

[Fernando]

Greygeek: I took ownership of my whole /home folder by typing what you said but, unfortunately, it didn't fix the problem.
Snowhog: I knew that, thanks!
Any other ideas?

What kills me is that xinit returns: "server already running".

[Fernando]

Maybe it's nothing, but I can get the command like in tty1 through tty6 but not in tty7...

[oshunluvr]

Maybe it's nothing, but I can get the command like in tty1 through tty6 but not in tty7...

TTY7 and 8 are reserved for the GUI. I doubt you need more that 6 terminals.

The simplest way to confirm that the problem is in user settings is by adding and logging into a new user.

To add a user, log into TTY1 and then:
sudo adduser <USERNAME>

Then, restart sddm and log in as the new user:
sudo service sddm restart

When your done, you can remove the new user:
sudo deluser --remove-home <USERNAME>

[Fernando]

"sudo service sddm restart" returned: "Failed to restart sddm.service: Unit sddm not found.". I installed sddm (not that I remember uninstalling it) and started it. That gave me a blank screen again. I rebooted and now I can't even get to the command line using CRTL+ALT+F1. I have no signal on my monitor but for TTY7 and that's a black screen.
So... I don't know.