PDA

View Full Version : black screen no graphical program menu shell startx not work



woodsmoke
01-31-2010, 07:42 PM
Black screen, no graphical programs in menu, shell startx not work, upgrade got kde, sudo init 1, sudo init 5

WOAH!! How cool is this!

I reinstalled Knoppix on top (over the previous install) and...............

EVERYTHING IS STILL THERE!!!! I mean.........EVERYTHING!!!

This on a Toshiba Satellite laptop L35 with Knoppix the sole install on the hard drive.

Here is what happened.

I saw that there were a bunch of updates, 94 to be exact. So I decided to do the updates.

I've run into this before with other distros, the updates gave me plain vanilla KDE instead of the original community version.

I THINK that the way to NOT get plain vanilla KDE...... I THINK......if someone has further information PLEASE POST IT is.....

There, were, I think, five places where, after the download of the updates, that I was asked if I wanted to “keep the old ” or "use the new”.

KEEP THE ORIGINAL. At least I....think.....that is what you should do, it worked with an Ubuntu distro.

It may be that there are only a couple of those that really affect things dunno...if someone knows please post. It might save a few posts from frustrated people! :)

But, here are the problems caused by the “updates”:

a) I lost “graphical programs” in the original menu.
b) “startx” in shell started the OS, I could see the desktop for a few seconds, and then it fell back to the “black screen”.

I couldn't get past the black screen, there were a lot of commands there but I couldn't get anything to work.

So, I got on another computer and found a thread that was a reply to a similar situation.

At the prompt type:

sudo init 1

hit enter

then

sudo init 5

hit enter.

This will then boot the system. However, I was in “KDE”. All of the apps and my stuff was there but no Compiz. I restarted Compiz with the mouse but then found that the keyboard was not working.

And, no matter what I did, using the keyboard function in the menu etc. I couldn't get the keyboard to work.

HOWEVER the thing about getting to this situation is that you could insert a usb flash drive, and with right click, copy and past your data into the flash drive. Somewhat tedious but doable.

Well, I keep all of my “current” data on both the machine and a usb flash drive so recovering the data, in and of itself, was not a problem.

However, I was kinda irritated about losing my tweaks! :)

So, I did a reinstall and.....

WOAH!!!! GOT THE WHOLE SYSTEM BACK, the tweaks, the data, all of it :!:

HOW COOL IS THAT!!!!

Great Job Knoppix developers!!!!!

Again, if anyone has information to add please do so.

woodhavingfunsmoke