Comment 15 for bug 431166

Revision history for this message
Alex (alex112283) wrote : Re: [Bug 431166] Re: karmic gdm restarts X infinitely when video driver fails to load

I was wondering about that. Anyway, thanks for the reply(s).

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 2:47 PM, srg84 <email address hidden> wrote:

> @klemperal if you don't have another bootable kernel my solution is
> useless.
>
> --
> karmic gdm restarts X infinitely when video driver fails to load
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/431166
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in GDM: The Gnome Display Manager: New
> Status in “gdm” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
> Status in “upstart” package in Ubuntu: Invalid
> Status in gdm in Ubuntu Karmic: Confirmed
> Status in upstart in Ubuntu Karmic: Invalid
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: gdm
>
> If Xorg is misconfigured in a way that prevents the video driver from
> loading, such as this /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
>
> Section "Device"
> Identifier "Default Device"
> Driver "drunk"
> EndSection
>
> (or, more realistically, if you’re using a proprietary driver that failed
> to compile for the current kernel), then gdm will respawn X repeatedly, many
> times per second, forever.
>
> When this happens, it is nearly impossible to log into the console to stop
> gdm, because you cannot tell which characters of your password made it into
> the password prompt while the screen was flickering wildly. So if you want
> to test this, make sure you have an open console root shell with ‘stop gdm’
> ready to execute.
>