xorg 7.4 questions

[Warren Block]

On Mon, 28 Dec 2009, doug at safeport.com wrote:

> I have been trying to get xorg 7.4 first going and then updated. I have some 
> general questions. First using xdm it takes from 3-5 minutes to start. 
> Second, using hal and dbus even starting is an adventure. Once it started in 
> well under a minute but mostly it just locks up. In reading Xorg.0.log and 
> xdm.log, I see no errors. Is my time-to-start out of line?

Yes.  For testing, disable xdm and try just "startx".  If that's still 
slow, try "Xorg -retro" (ctrl-alt-backspace to quit, or maybe 
ctrl-alt-fn to switch back to the console running X and ctrl-c).

I've heard of very slow starting with xdm but never got feedback to 
determine the problem.

> Using hal and dbus was working fine until I attempted updating xorg using 
> portmaster, trying 'portmaster -n -PP xorg'. This gave me a list that seemed 
> reasonable so I tried it for real, getting an error about finding an archive 
> that I did not understand and the man page did not address. So I installed 
> portupgrade and the 'hal dbus' version of xdm stopped working. I view this as 
> coincidence but switching back to not using hal and dbus and using the ati 
> driver (rather than radeon) works.

What video board do you have?  What is in your xorg.conf?  The ATI 
driver is just an autoloader; if you have a Radeon, it'll load that 
anyway.

> As it appears that kde4 depends on having xorg updated, I am kind of stuck. 
> Is the time-to-start an indication that I have a basic hardware issue and all 
> my other symptoms derive that that?

Doubtful.

> My last question is does kde4 require hal or dbus to be activiated?

Probably not, but I use xfce.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA