"xgl" Desktop Effects = Reformat..../how To Backup System Se

I've been dabbling in Linux for a VERY short time and installed OpenSUSE yesterday on a Toshiba A85 Sat laptop. I went exploring first thing, as is my nature and I enabled the Xgl Desktop Effects to see what it would do. This locked the machine I couldn't use the GUI on subsequent reboots... I could load to the desktop and then nothing would respond.

So I had to reformat. I noticed on the way back up that 10.2 sees me as having a Radeon 9200 when I'm pretty sure it is a 9000, so maybe that caused the problem.

Mostly my question today is, how do I avoid the reformat in the future? Are there some key files/folders I can back up and then boot to the LiveCD to restore if things go bad later? Or is there a "snapshot" type of tool?

Hi.

I've been dabbling in Linux for a VERY short time and installed OpenSUSE yesterday on a Toshiba A85 Sat laptop. I went exploring first thing, as is my nature and I enabled the Xgl Desktop Effects to see what it would do. This locked the machine I couldn't use the GUI on subsequent reboots... I could load to the desktop and then nothing would respond.

So I had to reformat.
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Try to be more patient, not every single problem is fixed with a format. First of all, are you using beryl or compiz? Anyway, if something goes wrong with Xgl, you can restore your system by following theese steps:
1) Reboot and, when you have to choose which OS you want to run, choose suse and type '3' (no quotes). This will get you to text mode (an ugly console if you are not used to it).
2) Once there, you'll be prompted to log in. Do it as root. From there, type

gnome-xgl-settings --disable-xgl

That will disable Xgl server, but you still have to disable beryl/compiz autorun if you enabled that so:
3) Disable beryl/compiz running at startup. This may be different depending the way in which you set it up, but usually involves removing a file in your /home/here_your_user_name/.kde/Autostart directory named beryl.desktop or compiz.desktop... Here you may need some finding out...
4) After all of this, reboot your computer and boot again SuSE. If everything went OK, you should have your old desktop restored.

I noticed on the way back up that 10.2 sees me as having a Radeon 9200 when I'm pretty sure it is a 9000, so maybe that caused the problem.
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Well, as far as I know, it may be because both of them have a chip from the same "family". This shouldn't be the point. With your card, the bad news are ATI/AMD is not supporting it on their drivers. The good news are you have cool support from the free driver (from the community). So you CAN'T run Xgl. But the desktop effects are made by the composition manager (beryl or compiz) so you can get them by installing one of them and using AIGLX. To do that, I can't help you, but a good place to look would be at http://forum.beryl-project.org

Mostly my question today is, how do I avoid the reformat in the future? Are there some key files/folders I can back up and then boot to the LiveCD to restore if things go bad later? Or is there a "snapshot" type of tool?
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Well, backing up a system is almost an art, but a good advice (at least i use to do it) is having a partition fully dedicated to your /home directory, so if everything crashes, you can reinstall the system and your personal configuration and documents will be there waiting for you. To get more advice about backing up, ask again. There are wise people here who know more of that than me.

Hope it was helpful.