[PLUG] X 4.1 problems on Debian

[Nels Tomlinson]

Thanks.

I have reinstalled ( for the nth time; I'm getting pretty familiar with 
it), and am sticking at stable for a while.  X-window 3.3.6 works just 
peachy, as ever.  There were big bugs in the 4.0.x versions of the 
neomagic drivers, but I thought from the Neomagic help mailing list that 
they were fixed in the 4.1.x series.  Not so, it seems.

I would still like to upgrade some big parts of my system to testing: 
things like emacs and tex and pretty much everything other than X.  I've 
been reading the apt-howto, and have found info on pin in the 
preferences file.  The only problem is that there seem to be 20+ 
packages making up the X system, and at least 10 of them certainly 
shouldn't be upgraded, and there might be some others which have escaped 
my notice.

Is there a package I can pin which will hold the entire X system at 
version 3.3.6*, or will I have to go through and pin each one I can find 
  by hand?

I've been using dpkg -l to find out what I have installed, by the way.

Thanks again for your time.
Nels

Matt Wallace wrote:

>>* First, even at runlevel 2 (my current default) it runs xdm and X. I
>>fixed that by removing the S99xdm script from /etc/rc2.d (is this a bug?
>>should it do that?).
>>
> 
> Yes, this is the default.  I've always thought Debian was retarded when it
> came to runlevels.  I fixed mine so that level 2 is no X, no networking;
> level3 is no X, with networking; level4 is X with no networking and level
> 5 is everything.  update-rc.d is helpful in managing these links (man is
> your friend)
> 
> 
>>* Second, when I run startx, icewm starts up fine (once I added that to
>>my .xsession file), but then it freezes SOLIDLY!  Logging in via ssh
>>shows it (X) eating up all the cpu time, and after killing it, a
>>kpm-something process remains which I can't kill.
>>
> 
> Just so you don't feel lonely, this is problem that I think everyone has
> at least once.  X seems to either work, or lock up with absolutely no
> indication why.  The other frustrating thing is that it can lock up for
> hundreds of different reasons.  One time, I fixed this problem (on a
> totally different version of X and totally different card)  by changing
> my color depth.  For some reason my card seemed to only like 24-bit color,
> not 16, not 32.  I'm betting this won't work for you, but it's worth a
> shot.  you might also try starting in a lower resolution.  If either of
> these work, there's probably a bug in the driver you're using and you
> should file a bug report.
> 
> -Matt
> 
>