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**chessmani** · Nov 20, 2009, 04:36 AM

Re: "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Same here. In my case I installed the latest nvidia driver which made it work better, but many times I have to reboot like twice until X starts.

**chconnor** · Nov 20, 2009, 03:43 PM

Re: "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Hmmm... I guess my current best guess is "9.10 upgrade messed up the xorg.conf config" and i'll work from that assumption for a little while and see if it yields any insight. Any thoughts from anyone are welcome...

Thanks,
-c

**chconnor** · Nov 21, 2009, 07:26 PM

Re: "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Here's a boot chart PNG (attached). It looks like Xorg is starting no less than 4 times.

However, I see in /var/log/kdm.log:

error setting MTRR (base = 0xd0000000, size = 0x02000000, type = 1) Invalid argument (22)
ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

...which seems to be the last thing a given X.org process logs before dying.

I've googled around for that and haven't found too much useful info about it. I will be trying to copy /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to ~/.xinitrc, as per one person's suggestion, and will try adding an option to xorg.conf (not sure where?):

Option "mtrr" "false"

Some seem to think that the mtrr error is not actually what may be causing X to fail to start up. It also seems to be related to window managers somehow.

~/.xsession-errors has all kinds of stuff in it. I'll post a clean version of that after i start up one more time.

While in /var/log i ran this:

grep -r fail Xorg.*

and I see:

Xorg.1.log

EE) RADEON(0): [dri] DRIScreenInit failed. Disabling DRI.
Xorg.1.log.old

EE) RADEON(0): [dri] DRIScreenInit failed. Disabling DRI.
Xorg.2.log

EE) RADEON(0): [dri] DRIScreenInit failed. Disabling DRI.
Xorg.failsafe.log:_XSERVTransOpen: transport open failed for inet6/caseylinux:0
Xorg.failsafe.log:_XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServerList eners: failed to open listener for inet6
Xorg.failsafe.log

++) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.failsafe.log", Time: Sat Nov 21 16:05:29 2009
Xorg.failsafe.log

++) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe"
Xorg.failsafe.log

II) VESA(0): VBESetVBEMode failed...Tried again without customized values.
Xorg.failsafe.log.old:_XSERVTransOpen: transport open failed for inet6/caseylinux:0
Xorg.failsafe.log.old:_XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServer Listeners: failed to open listener for inet6
Xorg.failsafe.log.old

++) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.failsafe.log", Time: Sat Nov 21 16:05:26 2009
Xorg.failsafe.log.old

++) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe"
Xorg.failsafe.log.old

II) VESA(0): VBESetVBEMode failed...Tried again without customized values.

...none of which seems like it would cause Xorg to die or fail... there's the DRI thing, but it sounds as if that was accounted for by the driver.

-c

**chconnor** · Nov 21, 2009, 07:56 PM

Re: "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Hi - forgot to post the bootchart, but i'll skip it and .xession-errors (which are numerous but apparently unrelated) unless requested.

I figured one thing out, at least: i should have mentioned that i have auto-login configured. It logs in but goes to the "locked" screen. I have found (at least three times, so far) that if i tap the shift key to bring up the login window (which is invisible in auto "locked" (screen saver) mode, so i need to do that to log in after startup), it seems to cause this problem.

If i wait until the mouse pointer appears, give it a few more seconds, and just generally be patient before i start hitting "shift", it seems to not do the multiple-X-startup-failure routines. If I am impatient and tap shift a lot as it's starting up, i get the four-X-startups behavior.

So perhaps X is not ready for keyboard input that early in the morning. :-)

The irony is that my slow startup, which originally prompted this investigation, is not helped either way (both about 105s with all the KDE loading, etc.) I think it's the fsck on the FAT32 partitions that's slowing things down.

So i'll call this "solved", in a sense, unless further problems crop up, and if anyone has any other thoughts, feel free to reply.

Thanks,
-c

**chconnor** · Nov 21, 2009, 07:57 PM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Anyone think this is worth a bug post? I guess it may be...

**doctordruidphd** · Nov 22, 2009, 08:32 PM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

This appears to be a problem with kdm being started before the video drivers. As a result, it is being started multiple times. There are several threads related to this problem. I filed a bug report on this (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/485033) but so far it's just sitting in limbo. There are quite a few users having troubles similar to this; it's fair to say that the startup sequence in karmic is major messed up, at least on some installations. If you have the gnome desktop installed, you might want to try switching to gdm instead of kdm -- that seems to have solved the problem here.

**chconnor** · Nov 22, 2009, 11:35 PM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Thanks for the ideas. As my workaround, i'm satisfied with not pressing any keys until it's ready, which seems to solve it, but it's good to know that i can try gdm if i need to. What you describe here and in the bug report sounds plausible (to my half-educated ears) as a cause of what happens to me; either way, sounds like the booting is still in flux. Hopefully it'll be sorted out a little more for the LTS release... just for completeness, i include with this post an example boot chart of my multiple-startups... thanks, -c

P.s. boot chart too big to attach, so see: http://www.mediafire.com/?y4zjltytz10

**doctordruidphd** · Nov 23, 2009, 08:35 AM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

FYI - The issue does appear to be fixed in lucid, at least in its present state. Other things are unstable, so I wouldn't recommend switching to lucid at this point for a production system.

**chconnor** · Nov 23, 2009, 12:53 PM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Nice.

**chessmani** · Nov 24, 2009, 04:22 AM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

I tried switching to GDM with bad results. After login a small terminal window on white background appears on screen, so I've had to switch back to KDM.

I usually have to restart 2-3 times until I can get into KDE. As I'm writing this, the system has upgraded some packages. I'll write back if it solves anything...

**chconnor** · Nov 24, 2009, 12:46 PM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Have you checked things out with bootchart? There's probably a better/smarter way, but for a naive like me it was a handy way to visualize what processes are doing what when... good for getting leads, anyway. I installed packages "bootchart" and "pybootchartgui", and it automatically worked from there (e.g. no kernel options needed, as some tutorials suggest). After boot (and after some time for the PNG generation to take place), see /var/log/bootchart/blah.png

You've looked in /var/log/kdm.log?

-c

**chessmani** · Nov 25, 2009, 03:20 PM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

Hmm, in /var/log/kdm.log I notice this (I'm using nvidia 190.42, dkms didn't give any errors when installing the module):

Code:

++) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.failsafe.log", Time: Wed Nov 25 21:48:12 2009               
(++) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe"                          
error setting MTRR (base = 0xd5000000, size = 0x00e00000, type = 1) Invalid argument (22)        
(EE) Failed to initialize GLX extension (Compatible NVIDIA X driver not found)

and this:

Code:

(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"                               
 ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log                                        
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog                              
debconf: (TERM is not set, so the dialog frontend is not usable.)                    
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline                               
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Readline                             
debconf: (This frontend requires a controlling tty.)                           
debconf: falling back to frontend: Teletype                               
/etc/gdm/failsafeXServer: line 124: /var/log/gdm/failsafe.log: No such file or directory         
Warning: Cannot write to /var/log/gdm/failsafe.log                           
xinit /etc/gdm/failsafeXinit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe -- /usr/bin/X -br -once -config /etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe -logfile /var/log/Xorg.failsafe.log

I haven't checked with bootchart, I'll look into it later.

**chessmani** · Nov 28, 2009, 09:02 PM

Re: [solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

OK, so I don't know if there has been any update targetting these, but I've been using my comp for 4 consecutive days without booting problems. So I guess it's solved right now.

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[solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

[solved] [sort of] "X server startup timeout" when kdm is starting...

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