ASUS K52F startx failure in BackTrack5

[Bigstape]

Hey all,

Please forgive me for posting this under "General," but I managed to solve this exasperating little problem without resorting to all the tests required to meet the requirements for posting under "Bugs" or "Fixes". I want to get the information online to help anyone else with the same problem and this seemed to be the place to post the info.

In sum, the "startx" command does not work on an ASUS K52F running BackTrack R1 or R2 both Gnome and KDE. I have not tried other versions and do not plan to. When you type "startx" you get a gray screen instead of a GUI and you cannot get a text console using the usual function key combinations, forcing you to reboot the computer with the power switch.

The problem is the stock BackTrack kernel. I do not know what configuration of the kernel is causing the problem or how to fix it (yet).

I solved this problem by installing a stock Ubuntu kernel (2.6.38) from the command line using dpkg. Now startx works fine and I have the standard BackTrack Gnome desktop. I do not know what useful features, if any, I am missing from the BackTrack kernel. I plan to compile my own kernel by comparing the stock Ubuntu and BackTrack kernel configurations.

I hope that someone else finds this information useful.

Cheers!

[Bigstape]

No need to compile a kernel! Unless, of course, you want to anyway.

Edit /etc/default/grub

And change this line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text splash nomodeset=1 vga=791"

To this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.modeset=1 vga=791"

As explained in this thread: http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forum...ad.php?t=42393

And then you can use the stock BackTrack kernel with no problem.

And if you want to avoid loading a stock Ubuntu kernel altogether, boot from the LiveCD, select "Text Mode," hit 'tab,' and change the boot parameters to this: quiet splash i915.modeset=1 vga=791.

Then startx will work on the live cd.

[Bigstape]

Oh and don't forget to update-grub after editing /etc/default/grub.