KDM / Xorg freeze issue

[Bderenor Caine]

Okay, so this is BAD

I upgraded from Hardy to Intrepid. Did it before on two other PCs and it worked (sort of). This time, however, i am left with a very confusing error. I can boot up the system fine, until kdm shows up. From that point on it is an average of about 10 seconds until the system freezes completely (including mouse), regardless of whether i actually try to log in or not. The only thing that still happens is that the Num Lock and Caps Lock lights start to blink.

This is what i have already tried:

• Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. Does nothing. Same goes for Ctrl+Alt+Fn.
• Alt+PrntScr+(S,U,B). Doesn't work either.
• sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg. No effect. Also, the xorg.conf file is eerily empty compared to earlier versions
• Booted in recovery mode, dropped to root shell. Typed startx. Result: KDE4.1.2 starts up, only now i have no mouse and can't run programs since Alt+F2 doesn't seem to work either. Ctrl+Alt+Fn works, however
• Looked at Xorg.0.log. Shows no errors, last thing in the log is output of xkb
• Looked at /var/log/messages, Shows no errors.
• Explicitly specified nvidia driver in xorg.conf (Card is a GeForce FX5200). No effect
• Explicitly specified vesa driver in corg.conf. No effect.
• Booted with an earlier kernel version (2.6.24-21-generic instead of 2.6.27-7-generic). No effect.

I really, really need this system up and running as soon as possible. Any information you can give me is greatly appreciated.

[Bderenor Caine]

Re: KDM / Xorg freeze issue

Update

after much spelunking, it seems that the wifi module acx is to blame. It seems to segfault some time after X is loaded. The following things are still confusing:

• The module works fine in recovery mode
• lsmod shows it being used by usbcore (in recovery mode) although the wifi card is oci, not usb

[Bderenor Caine]

Re: KDM / Xorg freeze issue

In case anyone else has this problem:
i eventually gave up on the acx driver and used ndiswrapper. Doesn't work as good as acx would, but since acx segfaults, there is really no competition.

[Bderenor Caine]

Re: KDM / Xorg freeze issue

incidentally, since i apparently got 79 views on this topic i would appreciate it if people would tell me what i did wrong since not one of those 79 people tried to help me with this problem.

[aged hippy]

Re: KDM / Xorg freeze issue

incidentally, since i apparently got 79 views on this topic i would appreciate it if people would tell me what i did wrong since not one of those 79 people tried to help me with this problem.

I've read this, and your problems, but as i can offer nothing more than to suggest a re-installation instead of an up-grade, i've kept quiet.