Author Topic: Pluto unable to start X  (Read 3186 times)

ahael

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Pluto unable to start X
« on: December 24, 2008, 05:02:18 pm »
Im setting up LinuxMCE for the first time and thought I was prepared.  I did my research for about a month before i bought any gear.  My setup ended up being:

Display: Sony KDL 46z4100 via HDMI cable
HTPC:
    Asus M3A78-EM (using FGLRX driver for the 1080p output compat with my tv)
    AMD6000+ 64bit
    4GB DDR2 800 Ram
    pcHDTV Inc. HD-5500 HDTV PCI CARD

So I knew there were some troubles users had going into this setup but everything seemed to be managable, but now I'm stuck.

I got the OS installed and I'm having trouble now with the initial setup.  The behavior im getting is that when I let the system boot normally, the AVWizard will not run and i cant get any picture.  I get stuck in an endless loop of X resets. 

I booted into recovery mode and manually configured my display.  Now if I run X or startx while in recovery mode the system looks BEAUTIFUL.  Problem is, if I try to kick off the AVWizard_Run.sh or go ahead and reboot the same problem persists.  When I try to fire off AVWizard_Run.sh manually, it seems to cut itself short and behaves the same way it would if you called AVWizard from a konsole window with X running, except that I dont even get the initial welcome screen to display.

When I looked back at my xorg.conf file I found that it had been rolled back to the vesa driver and was set to 640x480 so I tried adding the command
Code: [Select]
exit to the top of Xconfigure.sh and copying my saved copy of xorg.conf back on top but had no impact.

Ive been thru cover to cover of
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Display_Drivers
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Fglrx
http://www.rage3d.com/content/articles/atilinuxhowto/Linux_ATI.html#SECTION000120000000000000000
http://ati.amd.com/products/catalyst/linux.html
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/AVWizard

shoot, i even tried disecting the acutall /usr/pluto/bin/{AVWizard_*,X*}.{sh,awk} script files.

I cant seem to find any other info on troubleshooting why Pluto is bailing and not accepting my X config even though it works perfectly if i just call startx.  Any suggestions?

tschak909

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Re: Pluto unable to start X
« Reply #1 on: December 24, 2008, 05:10:48 pm »
*hmm*

*shake-head*

congrats on basically ignoring virtually every post telling you NOT to use an ATI card. *thwack-you-on-the-head*

Replace the video card with an NVIDIA card, and you'll be up and running, otherwise, patches need to be sent in for AVWizard to correctly detect and configure the newest ATI cards.

-Thom

ahael

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Re: Pluto unable to start X
« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2008, 05:36:04 pm »
Well, I went with the M3A instead of the M3N for the DM Port and as i said, all the trouble everyone else had seemed manageable.  Are there any links regarding AVWizard/pluto troubleshooting/issue report you could provide?  I have considered scrapping and swapping out for the M3N but I'm a little stubborn and want to make sure i've exhausted my options.

After furter digging on the machine i found that the xorg-driver-fglrx package is getting removed from the system when i boot to the normal mode, any input on what may cause that?
« Last Edit: December 24, 2008, 07:25:19 pm by ahael »

ahael

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Re: Pluto unable to start X
« Reply #3 on: December 26, 2008, 04:01:30 pm »
FYI - i found the issue.  I really wasnt having any trouble with the ATI card or drivers.  My error was just plain dumb.  I had the problem with microscopic fonts in KDE so i added the -dpi 96 to the Start_X_Wrapper.sh for pluto.  The problem was that i added the option to the client side of the line rather than the server side of xinit.  I got stuck in the loop of x restarting because the wrapper was unable to launch the environment with the malformed command so then it would try to re-init my display settings and overwrite my xorg.conf.  I fixed my placement for the dpi option, replaced my xorg.conf, then reinstalled the display driver from scratch and the display is working beautifully since.