X server broken at startup on Compaq presario b1900

[BobEdwards]

apt-get dist-upgraded Compaq Presario B1900 from hardy -> intrepid -> jaunty
(X worked fine under hardy and intrepid). lspci reports ATI Technologies RC410 [Radeon Xpress 200M]

When X starts, get a mess on screen, system unresponsive to Ctrl-Alt-F1 etc.,
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and Ctrl-Alt-Delete. No cursor displayed.
I can login remotely using SSH and the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file looks relatively innocuous, other than this:

(II) Cannot locate a core pointer device.
(II) Cannot locate a core keyboard device.
(II) The server relies on HAL to provide the list of input devices.
        If no devices become available, reconfigure HAL or disable AllowEmptyInput.

which appears near the top. lshal -s doesn't reveal anything terribly exciting (to me...) and
the same message appears on my (working) Acer Aspire One running jaunty as well...

Where should I go next to diagnose?

[BobEdwards (bob-cs)]

Completely removing (purging) all packages with "xorg" and "xserver" in their name (and their dependencies) then re-installing "ubuntu-desktop" has fixed the problem up. No idea why. I had already "dist-upgraded" everything after "jaunty" was released, without getting this problem fixed. Must have been some configuration file other than /etc/X11/xorg.conf (which I had already deleted several times) that was causing the problem.

So, I can't reproduce the problem (easily) and so the "bug" should be abandoned or closed or something, I guess.

[pr (peter-rueckert)]

I have a similar problem on my Dell Vostro 1310, but only at about 10-20% of my logins. Usualy after one or two restarts keyboard and mouse work again.
Same message in log:

(II) Cannot locate a core pointer device.
(II) Cannot locate a core keyboard device.
(II) The server relies on HAL to provide the list of input devices.
        If no devices become available, reconfigure HAL or disable AllowEmptyInput.

The problem appeared with dist-upgrade from intrepid to jaunty.

Any ideas?

[kurt belgrave (trinikrono)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner.
There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test the current Ubuntu development version (10.10). If you can test it, and it is still an issue, we would appreciate if you could upload updated logs by running apport-collect <bug #>, and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.