Bug#302685: After removing gdm 'startx' wont start X

Justin Pryzby Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>, 302685@bugs.debian.org
Sat, 2 Apr 2005 14:22:27 -0500


On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 06:51:37PM +0200, Leszek Koltunski wrote:
> 
> >Can you also confirm that XFree86 always works, independent of whether
> >gdm is installed or not, and independent of what user runs it?
> 
> ok, I've got 3 users here: 'root' , 'leszek' and 'blah' ( which is just a 
> dummy user created to test startx and XFree86 )
> 
> I purged gdm again, killed the X server, and tried 'startx-ing' with the 
> three users. root and blah could do it, leszek - no.
> 
> I then tried to issue 'XFree86'. root could do it, both blah and leszek 
> failed with
> 
> Fatal server error:
> Cannot move old log file /var/log/XFree86.0.log.old
> 
> No wonder, since
> 
> leszek@utumno:~$ ls -l /var/log | grep XFree
> -rw-r--r--  1 root        root       40196 Apr  3 00:44 XFree86.0.log
> -rw-r--r--  1 root        root       40078 Apr  3 00:43 XFree86.0.log.old
> 
> However, as I said above, 'blah' still can issue 'startx' with no 
> apparent problems at all!
Well, this is interesting, though probably not related to the original
problem.  X should be SUID root

  -rwsr-sr-x  1 root root 7860 2005-02-23 04:07 /usr/bin/X11/X

which is I guess how its supposed to be relocating the log files.  Can
you confirm that your permissions match:

  drwxr-xr-x  14 root root 4096 2005-04-02 11:42 /var/log

Justin