[mythtv-users] Xserver disappears: easy recovery methods?

[Kevin Kuphal]

R. Geoffrey Newbury wrote:

>I'm building up a Mythtv box. Just loaded the new Mandriva 2006.0-04 beta
>which has the 2.6.12-11 kernel with all of the via modules built in.
>I'm running KDE and with the right software installed I confirmed that it
>would play audio (kscd) and DVD's (kaffeine).
>I installed my pcHDTV card software, then ivtv for the Hauppauge 500.
>Then I configured and compiled mythtv..This took a while and I ran out of
>time at the end of it. It reported some errors so I figured I would have
>to try again, probably with a newer version than the one urpmi gave me.
>
>I shutdown and this morning.... no X server running... no dm.. The error
>message points to an 'exec' failure and points to a file 'X' which is a
>symlink to a file 'Xorg'  *which does not exist*....(From memory ->
>/usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg...)
>
>At least it doesn't exist now..Otherwise the machine seems to work fine.
>Understand that it ran fine yesterday and I did not (at least knowingly)
>fiddle with anything to do with X...
>
>So. Any pointers on how to *quickly* recover? It appears that the Xserver
>is munged...I don't know where or how and I'm not sure I want to go
>spelunking too deeply in fear of breaking things worse.
>
>Worst case, I guess is to use this machine to find the correct URL then
>wget the X source rpms on the mythbox and then configure/make/make
>install, all in tty0...but I would like to avoid that if possible. It's
>hard enough to do when you DO have a graphical interface to work in!
>
>  
>
You could try reinstalling the RPM for X.  You can first see what is 
wrong by using:

rpm -V XFree86

This should tell you what files are missing or inconsistent with the 
XFree86 RPM package.  If you used apt-get to install your packages and 
need to reinstall them, I believe you can use:

apt-get --reinstall install XFree86

There are lots of XFree86 RPMs, so you might want to look over each of 
them.  Use this to get a list:

rpm -qa | grep XFree

I hope this leads you in the right direction.

Kevin