startx : stuck in a loop
After launching startx, I have this:
xauth: timeout in locking authority file /home/user/.Xauthority
the the screen gets blank, like it's turned off.
But it's not, since when I manually turn the laptop off, the screen shows up again with a message about me shutting the PC.
I tried :
- chmod an chown .Xauthority and /tmp/
- removing .Xauthority-c and another (maybe not c in the end, I don't remember) which caused another message and prevented the file to be used
Any idea? I think next time, after 20 min, I d'rather reinstall the whole thing, it takes less time. But maybe someone here experienced this as well.
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It looks indeed like your user is not the sole owner of .Xauthority.
Are you sure you did it right? just in case ->
cd /home/user
mv .Xauthority .Xauthority.old
touch .Xauthority
chown user:user .Xauthority
Also do a ->
chmod u+rw ~/.Xauthority
Just remove that file:
$ rm ~/.Xauthority
I've already tried all this (minus the "touch"), but for good measure, I tried both again.
I've also removed those locking .Xauthority-* files that appeared again.
But When I reboot, or when I just go startx from tty2,
I still get xinit: connection to X server lost.
EDIT:
I opened .Xauthority (and the .old as well), and just so you know, both are empty (don't know if it's normal).
.xinitrc seems as I defined it.
Earlier, I tried also changing the rights of .ICEauthority.
EDIT:
Forget it, I backed up my files and will reinstall.
It's the best way.
Let's just hope it doesn't happen again.
I don't think I've made weird things with users rights.
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Well, that's strange, hack. That never happened to me, but reading on the webz I found several pages describing the very same issue. The most common root of the problem appears to be the file is owned by root and not by the user. The two main solutions were to (as Maqique said), to simply remove the file and restart x. The other one was the one I copied and pasted for you, which doesn't really add anything to what you already tried other than backing up the old file (mv .Xauthority .Xauthority.old) and creating a new one (touch .Xauthority).
Too bad you had to reinstall, I used to do that a lot until I realized it is a huge waste of time, unless the issue is indeed definitely over my head. cheers.
Well it's ok, it gives me an opportunity to learn and get things right. Thanks again for your help btw.
If I can get my install process to be faster (install scripts, a few config files here and there, encrypting /boot, setting a few sepcific programs), a new install might take less time than trying to solve a specific problem if it takes, say, more than an hour without results.
I don't know what's best, I'm still experimenting here.
Thankfully, this problem concerns my secondary PC, so it's annoying, but isn't much of a big deal.
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Yw, mate Hack, but I did not help you.. :(
Last time I almost formatted and reinstalled everything was when I had a dependency hell here on Debian. The impulse was to reinstall. I decided I would not do that and instead I spent an hour to read and fix the problem, which after all proved to be perfectly solvable by a normal GNUser like meself . Not only it spared me some 3 or 4 hours (the time that it would take me to restore my OS exactly how I want it to be) but I also learned something new in the process. I think this "format and reinstall attitude" had its root in my long Win$ experience - on that proprietary bloated OS reinstalling actually brings benefit, a faster system, given how quickly and easily the win$ is affected by bloat and malware.
cheers
You do not need 3 or 4 hours to "restore the OS". See http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/cloning-system-or-how-make-copy-installed-packages-one-computer-another (you can use 'dselect' instead of the Synaptic package manager if you prefer the command line).
Since the system to clone will be, here, lost in favor of the freshly installed system, nothing has to be moved across computers. The list of packages and /var/cache/apt can be kept on the /home partition that the installer must *not* format, i.e., you must choose to "specify partitions manually" (I do not know how it is called nowadays, maybe "Something else" or "Manual partitioning"), specify the same partitions as your previous system but have the box "Format the partition" *unchecked* for /home.
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Tx for the link B. Magic. I usually just make sure I have all my data backed up and just reinstall everything, heh. I think the next time I'll follow this, it seems smarter.
I need to set my /home folder so I don't have to move it next time. it surely will shorten the reinstall. Thanks for the tip!
Well, you tried to help, which I am thankful for, and you helped me several times before as well :)
And in this instance, I can learn to not blindly reinstall out of impatience. So thanks for this.
