startx just dies

eivinn · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 219 Location: Norway

I have run the xf86config script, choosen my monitor and a Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro
card. I get no errors or warnings and when I run startx everything goes
blank.

Then after switching to virtual terminal 1 everything is back to cl.

There is nothing helpful for me in my XFree86.0.log file...

eivinn · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 219 Location: Norway

I have fiddled with xf86config now and came to this error message:

waiting for X server to begin accepting connections
giving up.
xinit: Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): Server error.

I have compiled kernel with maximum security. Can this break X?

mglauche · Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2002 10:45 am Post subject:

Whats in your logs ? check /var/log/XFree86.0.log and look why XFree server won't start

tomas · n00b Joined: 05 Jul 2002 Posts: 62 Location: Sweden

If you have grsec on the highest level, you must run chpax -p /usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 for X to start.
The chpax program can be found here.

eivinn · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 219 Location: Norway

What exactly does the chpax program do, and how do I compile it with gcc?

I also would like to know what grsec things to disable for X to work. I'm running a test-server with apache, procmail, etc, and would like to be able to run X remotely from it...

tomas · n00b Joined: 05 Jul 2002 Posts: 62 Location: Sweden

chpax is used to view or set security settings on a per executable basis. -p disables enforcing of PAGE_EXEC (whatever that is

).
I can't remember there being any particular problems compiling it. Just try gcc chpax.c -o chpax. Add options as necessary...

chpax -p ... seems to be enough to get X to work.

eivinn · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 219 Location: Norway

Thanks alot!

chpax did fix startx, but I still cannot run startx remotely through ssh.
I have now emerged WindowMaker, but cannot start this either, what is the command for this (or what do I need to do)?

eivinn · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 219 Location: Norway

OK, sorry for crying so fast...

Fixed WindowMaker by running the wmaker.inst got it working on localhost now.

Still won't start remotely :-(

Any suggestions?

Iturbide · n00b Joined: 28 Jun 2002 Posts: 27

That makes sense, IMHo. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but..

Startx tries to start an xserver on the localhost. That's not going to work over an ssh connection.
If your sshd config is set to handle the display setting, once you logged in, and type "set", you should see the DISPLAY variable set to your client:0, or something similar. That means that you can start a small xwindows program, and that it will try to display itself on your client machine, provided you have an xserver running there that accepts connections. On a windows platform, try something like exceed or xwin32 to act as xserver and windowmanager. On a unix client already running X, type "xhost +" to make it accept incoming connections (and blow away security. You can finetune with something like xhost +"name of remote machine".)
Now that will enable you to start a simple application. Just try with xterm to see if you can get it working.

I'm not sure what to do (what options, etc) to start an entire windowmanager. You already have a windowmanager running on your client machine. Surely it must be possible, but it may need some heavy command-line options.

OTOH, have you considered vnc? That'll do it pretty easily. Not that certain about security, though.

eivinn · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 219 Location: Norway

Well, wmaker does tell me that another Windowmanager is running when I try to run it from ssh. Strange enough I have tried this successfully with KDE, but I'll have to try starting plane x-programs first as you point out.
Taking a nap, and will post back when I have something new to report...