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Re: Cannot start X server
- From: Andrew Grimm <agrimm at redwood dot rsc dot raytheon dot com>
- To: cygwin-xfree at cygwin dot com
- Cc: nicolas dot roquette at jpl dot nasa dot gov, wj at sunroot dot de
- Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:11:19 -0600 (MDT)
- Subject: Re: Cannot start X server
- Reply-to: cygwin-xfree at cygwin dot com
I was having the exact same problem starting X under the newest Cygwin
release. I also found this very frustrating as I have been running X for
quite some time with no problems, then *boom* it suddenly broke.
One option that worked for me was to downgrade to the previous version of
the DLL (backout 1.3.13-2 to 1.3.12-4). This is simple to do using the
setup program but is not a long-term solution.
I am not an expert on this, but some research revealed that 1.3.13-2 has
turned on the "ntsec" option by default. If your computer is in an NT
domain, this affects you. To check, compare the UID/GID reported by your
"id -a" command with the ownership of your existing files "ls -ln $HOME".
If they don't match, you need to update your /etc/passwd and/or /etc/group
files. You can do this by replacing the <yourusername> entry in
/etc/passwd with the output of "mkpasswd -d -u <yourusername>" and
updating /etc/group with the output of "mkgroup -d | grep :<yourGID>:"
(note that the angled brackets are meant to indicate variables and are not
literally part of the commands).
This is not really an XFree problem, rather it is a global Cygwin issue
caused by a policy change that took most people by surprise.
Hope that fixes your particular problem,
Andy