INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes. FC2.

[someuser77]

hello. first of all i would like to mention i'm new to linux, so be as detailed as you can please.
i recently installed Fedora Core 2, all was fine, the system ran for a week or so.
today when i booted up i couldnt get to the login screen, the blue screen switched to black and to back to blue in a loop. i booted linux rescue from cd#1 and tried:

# yum remove pango
# yum remove pango-devel
# yum remove xorg-X11
# yum install pango
# yum install pango-devel
# yum install xorg-X11

so now when i boot up i get "INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes."
i can press Ctrl+C and login as root, but when i run startx i get a funny colored terminal.
i added "/usr/X11R6/lib/font" to "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" but it didnt help.
i can boot up using Windows 2000 OS, Knoppix 3.9 or FC CD#1, but i dont know how i can use it to fix this mess, and i wouldnt want to format and reinstall FC2.
help will be appreciated.

[daneel971]

It happened to me when I was on FC2, and it was due to a misconfigured xorg.conf. In my case, it loaded the wrong video card driver.
You can try to find out which driver is the correct one for your card (what kind of video card do you have?) and manually fix the xorg. file.
An alternative solution is:
boot in runlevel 3
log in as root
rename to something else (add a .bak suffix to them) /etc/sysconfig/hwconf, /etc/X11/xorg.conf, /etc/modprobe.conf
reboot: kudzu will prompt you for configuring new devices and hopfully will create a new working xorg.conf for you

[someuser77]

thank you for your reply daneel971.
i renamed the files and on boot kudzu did load, but he configured the network card, with audio and chipset, not the graphics card so the problem stayed the same.
i have a On-Board "S3 ProSavageDDR" card/chip.
is there a way to make the system rewrite xorg.conf and/or other needed files?

[brianmsu80]

Have you tried just running setup?

setup

[someuser77]

i didnt find any option in "setup" to configure the graphics card or the graphic user interface.

[brianmsu80]

You want to pick X configuration.

[someuser77]

Originally Posted by someuser77

i didnt find any option in "setup" to configure the graphics card or the graphic user interface.

what should i pick?
is there some other way to call "X configuration"?


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[brianmsu80]

So you don't have an option for X configuration in setup? It should be at the bottom.

You could try
system-config-display --reconfig

Can you make sure xorg.conf exists (didnt you rename it?)
and that it's chmod is equal to -rw-rw-r--

[someuser77]

i changed xorg.conf chmod to -rw-rw-r-- so now it shows green on 'ls'.
i used yum to install system-config-display and ran "system-config-display --reconfig" and got a blue screen with a mouse cursor on it. nothing happened so i rebooted the computer and ran "setup", now i do have a "X configuration", i ran it and again i got the same blue screen with a cursor and again nothing happened.
on boot i still get the " INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast" error. but i think its a progress.

[someuser77]

# system-config-display --reconfig:


# startx:


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[Twey]

I'd switch to FC4, if I were you. I had this problem with Debian at one point.

[someuser77]

i moved to FC4. so far so good. thanks everyone!