My CDE Xserver is not working

[Jorge Castillo]

I'm working on a visualize c360 and the CDE does not want to start up!
I'm getting this message: Xserver cannot be started on Display :0....
All I can do is work under the command line..

[Christopher Meenan]

One basic thing to check is if your mouse is inserted all the way. I have seen a missing mouse do this before.

Chris

[KapilRaj]

Hi ,

01.check for /vat/dt/Xerrors file
02.do an nslookup on host & ip address both should give same o/p
03.rm /dev/crt*;reboot (system will re-create the device files while restart
04.If u r an nis client , nis server should be up
05.check up your lan card

hope you solve the prob. at the earliest

kaps

[Alex Glennie]

If it were me I'd try and work out if the Xserver or CDE has the problem =>

/sbin/init 2
/usr/bin/X11/X :0 if this works X is probably OK, if not it should error : if mouse/KB the problem it will refer to dev files or X0.pointers.

Xserver log file = /var/dt/Xerorrs.

If CDE most likely a hostname resolution problem .... use previous suggestions ....... nb dr_dt maybe useful too.

ps rmsf /dev/*crt* followed by insf -evd framebuf will save you rebooting !

[Kenneth Platz]

Jorge,

There are a fair number of problems that can cause the X server to be unable to start. I'll give you a list of the more common, and if this doesn't work, then you can post the additional symptoms here and I should be able to help you out from there.

The best diagnostic tool to attempt to resolve these problems is to try to run the Xserver by hand. The easiest way of doing this is as Alex suggested. Bring the system down to runlevel 2 (/sbin/init 2), and then attempt to start the X server (/usr/bin/X11/X :0). However, in order to better simulate the actual CDE startup sequence, I would not recommend you start the X server as root -- instead, do a "su - daemon", because sometimes there will be a permissions problem that will not affect the root user, but will show up when starting as daemon.

There are a fair number of different errors you may see. I'll cover the most common ones here:

If you get an error about "Cannot open pointer device, is one attached?", then your first step would be to ensure that the mouse is attached. If it IS attached, then you should try swapping it out with a "known good" mouse. If that still doesn't work, then verify that /dev/ps2mouse exists, and has the correct permissions:

crw-rw-rw- 1 bin bin 159 0x000001 Mar 26 07:44 /dev/ps2mouse

Another error you may get is "Could not establish any listening sockets. Is one attached?" There are 2 possible causes to this:

1) A process may be using port 6000 for some reason

2) The permissions on /var/spool/sockets are not correct.

You can check to see if a process has port 6000 open by running the command: "netstat -an | grep 6000" If you get a line similar to this one:

tcp 0 0 *.6000 *.* LISTEN

Then you should probably use the "lsof" tool (available at http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Sysadmin/lsof-4.55/ ) to determine which process has that port open. If no port is using port 6000, then you should check the permissions on /var/spool/sockets (they should be 777), /var/spool (555), /var (555), and / (755).

If you get an error about "Cannot open the graphics resource manager" or "grm" or "grmd", then you should check two things:

1) Verify the permissions on /tmp (777) and / (755).

2) Make sure that you have at least 64MB of shared memory available (via the shmmax kernel parameter).

Finally, if you get errors about "Broker Bidding" or "Failed DDX Broker Bids", then you most likely either do not have the correct version of the X server filesets to support your graphics device, or the X server extension files have become corrupted or mismatched. The solution to both of these problems is to install the latest version of the Xserver patch, which for 10.20 is PHSS_23535 and for 11.0 it is PHSS_23546. I would also recommend installing the current dld.sl patch (10.20: PHSS_17225, 11.0: PHSS_22514) since the X server has exposed a number of defects in previous versions of these patches.

If these suggestions do not fix the problem, please post the error messages you get from the /usr/bin/X11/X :0 command here and I'll see what I can do.

[Joe Colucci_1]

Jorge,

One very common source of problems is that the system cannot properly resolve its hostname. Has the hostname been changed and/or has there been any changes to DNS, /etc/hosts, /etc/rc.config.d/netconf or /etc/resolv.conf?

--Joe

[Les Connally]

Thanks All!
I was googling and came across this.. it answered my issues perfectly!

I had gotten a Cseries box off eBay.. and of course, CDE wouldnt work..

Now, WHY HP-UX requires perfect DNS I do not understand.. but nevertheless, getting all this square, makes everything happy.

But does this imply, if the DNS machine goes down, CDE will refuse to work again?!?!? or the network??

Tell me it aint so!

[Alex Glennie]

Les,

yes you are more or less correct : cde is very sensitive wrt hostname resolution : my advise is edit your nsswitch.conf file to use files before DNS