Re: [gdm-list] gdm won't run after upgrade...

[Ray Strode <halfline gmail com>]

Hi,

On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 4:49 AM, Morgan Read <mstuff read org nz> wrote:
> Yup, that's it!  Thank you sooo much - but, I've looked over the nouveau
> pages looking to implement the 3d in mesa (haven't managed) and it
> mentions the xorg.conf file all over the place?
No idea.  You *can* have an xorg.conf but it has to mention nouveau
not nvidia's driver.

> Is this a very recent change?
Getting X starting without xorg.conf became a goal in like early 2005
iirc (from Adam Jackson and other X guys).  It took a couple years
after that for it to actually work in most cases, but it's worked
pretty well since then for some time now.

> If so, where are the prefs kept
What prefs? A lot of X configuration can be down dynamically at run
time these days.  For cases where you still need a config file you can
still have one (or since fairly recently you can throw snippets of
incomplete config files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d

> shouldn't the upgrade have taken it out?
No, since it's still valid to have one, removing it on upgrade is
probably a bad idea.  Especially (as in your case) it was configured
to use a non-stock driver.

> If I go back to the nvidia proprietary drivers (which
> unfortunately I'll inevitably do) should I put the xorg.conf back in
> (re-label)?
Well, presumably you can just repeat whatever steps you went through
before to get it going and it will regenerate the config file for you
again under the covers.

--Ray