Working on old 32 bit laptop and trying to upgrade from 13.2 with KDE desktop.
The upgrade crashed probably due to unrelated comms problem so I started over with simple network installation.
On reboot I now get grub options OK and the coloured splash screen but then a white screen.
Ctrl Alt F1 takes me to a login screen where I can log in using my previously used name and pw and I am them in terminal. I can cd to /home and see my directory with ls so all seems as it should be.
If I try and start my desktop with startx I get over 20 lines of text and I have no idea how to get hold of them to post them here.
The gist of the error message is:
xauth: file /home/alastair/.serverauth.1666 does not exist
server already running
xinit failed. /usr/bin/Xorg is not setuid, maybe that’s the reason?
and then a strong suggestion that I use a display manager or adjust /etc/permissions.local and run chkstat --system --set afterwards.
What does “simple” mean exactly?
Did you choose KDE, or what?
On reboot I now get grub options OK and the coloured splash screen but then a white screen.
Obviously a problem with the display manager, maybe related to the graphics driver.
Try to add “nomodeset” to the boot options, or set DISPLAYMANAGER=“xdm” in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager to use the more simple xdm instead.
And post more information about the hardware in use (CPU and GPU in particular).
Ctrl Alt F1 takes me to a login screen where I can log in using my previously used name and pw and I am them in terminal. I can cd to /home and see my directory with ls so all seems as it should be.
If I try and start my desktop with startx I get over 20 lines of text and I have no idea how to get hold of them to post them here.
and then a strong suggestion that I use a display manager or adjust /etc/permissions.local and run chkstat --system --set afterwards.
You cannot run startx as normal user (since years).
You’d need to run it as root, or make X suid root (via /etc/permissions.local), but that’s considered to be a security risk (and it would cause further problems, as your user wouldn’t have the necessary permissions for certain things like audio/video access).
Hi Wolfi323, many thanks for your reply.
By simple I meant a full network installation with formatting of / partition and with wired (not wifi) connection and yes I did select KDE.
I shall experiment along the lines you suggest.
The laptop is an IBM* ThinkPad T42* 2373 (Pentium M 745 1.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD) which I believe has an AGP 4x - ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 - 32 MB DDR SDRAM graphics chip. As I recall the driver I was using with 13.2 was radeon but could not be sure. That is what has been loaded at present.
I tried running startx as root but still had error messages. I did not go down the changing permissions for the reason you outlined and didn’t think it would help ig running as root didn’t work.
Will get back to you when I find how to edit boot options!
Hi Malcolm,
Yes I appreciate that the laptop is less powerful than an RPi but it is more portable than TV. I intend to change desktop when I can get to the normal login screen. I am learning by doing but they keep changing things!!!
Hi Wolfi323, I couldn’t work out where to put “nomodeset” when I tried “e” during bootup and got the commands text. Neither could I work out how to include in the /etc/default/grub. I was able to change the display manager to “xdm” and rebooted.
The reboot took me to a grey graphics screen with gecko outline and a login box for localhost@localhost or similar. Put in my username and pw but sadly no graphics came up, just white screen. Now this could be indigestion as hinted by Malcolm but I think something else is wrong.
How should I include “nomodeset” in /etc/default/grub file so I can try that?
Hi Malcolm,
I understand the change of default wm but strangely there is no line with DEFAULT_WM that I can see. Will look again but meanwhile I inserted nomodeset where you suggested rebuilt grub.cfg and rebooted.
This time I had a radeon.init error and then the same login window localhost.localdomain (quoted wrong last time) and a small console window opened in bottom lh corner “Console log for localhost.localdomain.”
I logged in as usual and this time I had the green light bulb and eventually green hexagons with icons etc looking like a good stab at a desktop. So once more many thanks for your help and moving me forward.
Only issues now are:-
Desktop resolution is not as good as it used to be. Will try and sort it out with system settings.
Is there a raedeon driver that works or was that my imagination in 13.2?
There was no choice of WM in boot screens so how do I get to a simpler less resource hungry WM?
Of my three outstanding questions I have solved the WM using Yast rather than manual edit.
Resolution seems fixed but is acceptable.
Driver still in question but since all is now working this can wait.
Thanks again to all.
Budge
AFAIK, that doesn’t support OpenGL 2 which is required by both SDDM and Plasma 5. (because Qt5’s QML requires it)
“nomodeset” might help as it would also force Mesa’s software OpenGL renderer that would support the requirements.
But TBH, you likely won’t have fun with that.
Short of upgrading the hardware, your best bet really is to use lightdm and some less demanding desktop like XFCE or similar.
Hi wolfi323 and yes not much fun here. I have TW running with IceWM which I now have to learn.
I have a couple of issues following the upgrade.
Having put nomodeset in the boot script I get an error message at the start of the boot process (flashes by so cannot copy here at present but “radeon” features in it)
When I use Yast I get a message in the popup console:-
QStandardPaths: wrong ownership on runtime directory /run/user/1000, 1000 instead of 0.
How should I correct this.
I use wicked to manage my network because I could never get NetworkManager to work well. It now seems that for openvpn I must use NetworkManager. If I try and switch back from wicked I get a warning that I need a plasma widget for this to work but do they exist on IceWM?
If I switch to NetworkManager how do I get wifi to work. There is no widget to open Networkmanager to set up wifi.
Hi Malcolm,
I deleted nomodeset from boot and you are right, all is OK and error message no longer present.
Yes, right clicking mouse gets me same as “start button” but I still have no clue how to set up wifi with Network Manager. All works as usual with wicked and yast.
Cannot see me ever getting vpn to work on this although it is a piece of cake on RPi!!!
Finally many thanks for the link. I will have to read it all later when I have time.
Well, IceWM is very basic.
Maybe you should have a look at LXQt, LXDE, XFCE or Mate.
When I use Yast I get a message in the popup console:-
QStandardPaths: wrong ownership on runtime directory /run/user/1000, 1000 instead of 0.
How should I correct this.
How are you starting it?
But if it works, you can probably ignore it.
And it is normal that you get an xterm window asking for the root password in IceWM.
I use wicked to manage my network because I could never get NetworkManager to work well. It now seems that for openvpn I must use NetworkManager. If I try and switch back from wicked I get a warning that I need a plasma widget for this to work but do they exist on IceWM?
If I switch to NetworkManager how do I get wifi to work. There is no widget to open Networkmanager to set up wifi.
Run “nm-applet” (package NetworkManager-gnome), or use the text-mode “nmcli”.
Btw, future Plasma5 versions (starting with 5.12 I suppose) should be able to run without OpenGL (2) again.
The latest Qt5 versions do come with a QML software renderer, and work is being done currently to make Plasma work properly with it (there were some graphical glitches when it’s used apparently), and switch to it automatically if OpenGL doesn’t work, there will probably also be a config module similar to kwin’s compositing backend settings.
Actually that software renderer does exist for a while already.
But it was commercial (i.e. you had to pay for it) AFAIK, it just got open sourced recently and then integrated into Qt5 itself.