Linpus not loading GUI

Hi

My wife was watching BBC iPlayer on my son's AA1 last night and this morning the AA1 won't load the Linpus GUI. It gets to the Aspire One splash screen and gives an error xsetroot: Unable to open display 0:0 (or something very close as that disappears off the top of the screen). There are then a load of subsequent errors culminating in GtK-WARNING **: cannot open display: :0.0

I am a Linux newbie and very frustrated that I can't find any advice that makes sense, so please be gentle. Cheers

 

Hello, I've had a few things go wrong with this before. It sounds to me as if theres a problem with your xorg.conf

Assuming you still have the ability to type over the top of the blue screen try the following to copy your xorg backup file over the top of your current xorg (unless its been deleted - easily done!)

Type

Type in the password you set up when installing the system. Press enter to gain root access.

Now to copy the backup file over the top of the current. Type:

If it asks if you want to overwrite regular files or any other questions type Y and then press enter.

Type reboot and press enter. - Hopefully you will now be able to get back into your GUI

I had a similar problem with my xorg file so Im just going off what I did for my system.

Sometimes it is just easier to use your recovery cd

 

Thanks for the great, clear response. However I am starting to pull my hair out with this.

I go to put in su password and it says it is incorrect. I never remember setting one as the OS was already installed when I got it. I don't recall receiving anything that says what the password is for this machine. There is no recovery CD AFAIK, there isn't even a CD drive on the machine.

Tried F2 and going through the BIOS. Supervisor password is empty, so I set one - less than 8 chars, phew that was close. Incorrect password when trying your instructions again. Tried removing the password and trying again - same thing. Aaaaaargh. Is that BIOS supervisor password not the one I am being asked for?

Shop I bought it from is no longer around, so no recourse there.

The Linpus GUI is ideal for my 7 year old, but am tempted to try and put another distro on instead, was thinking of Puppy due to the limited power of the hardware. Either way, I am desperate to get to grips with Linux but am being thwarted at every turn (sorry, venting. This is the 3rd machine owned with Linux on and I still know nothing].

 

Not a problem, from what I remember to change your root password you do the following:

note; type all these commands without the quotation marks.

"sudo su"

then type "passwd"

type your new password, confirm / retype it, and now you should be set to follow the steps in my OP

 

Thanks for your patience. Changed the password, then try to copy the xorg.conf again and get:

bash: cp: command not found

have [root@localhost user] at the command prompt if that identifies anything.

Cheers again

 

Very unusual that the cp command didnt work. Did you type it exactly? Including the / at the start of the file path? - Judging from the error, its the copy command that has a problem, rather than a problem with the path.

Also, make sure you didnt put a space before the "cp" and double check you havent put capital letters.

If you checked this, and the 1st mothod still didnt work, try the command: system-config-display

Make sure you are root user whenh doing so.



Further still, if that still doesnt work, you may have to delete your xorg.conf file (I had to do this once, which then let me boot up with no problems. I then later opted to reset the AA1 anyway) I wont tell you how to do this just yet, incase we can get the machine to boot up another way.

Let me know.

 

Thanks for your help again MrPostman. Couldn't work out why the copy command wasn't working either - syntax was definitely correct.

Given that something odd was going on and my lack of time and skill, I found the recovery disk by chance and decided to wipe the AA1. Had to buy a 2GB USB Stick to use the recovery disk though, it rejected all my 1GB ones as too small, and finally got it working again last night. Left it downloading updates through the night, and have a happy son (& dad) this morning.

Cheers