Question

6

"/etc/X11/X not executable" error when startx

rated 0 times [ 6] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 17693 / 2 Years ago, mon, february 14, 2022, 11:57:07

What happened

I wanted to install KDE and Gnome along with Unity. I don't know when I installed gnome-shell on my Ubuntu 12.10, but I installed KDE minimal desktop just now using

sudo apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop

and selected lightdm as my default DM. Then I entered this to install gnome

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

and it said I already have it installed.

So, then I restarted in normal mode and Ubuntu didn't start.

Problem

I went to recovery mode and from root shell I used

startx

it throws these bunch of errors:

/etc/X11/X is not executable

xinit: giving up

xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused

xinit: server error

and when I tried

chmod +x /etc/X11/X

it says

chmod: cannot operate on dangling symlink `/etc/X11/X'

I can't use apt-get to reinstall packages, because our ISP uses portal login - and I don't know how to login from terminal (so can't connect to network). May be I can use live disk, but I don't know how to configure packages on my HD from livedisk.

I am on Windows 8 now. Any help regarding how can I get my desktop back is appreciated!

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lasagnerhead

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4 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago sigtestim · Accepted Answer

I am writing an answer for my question, but actually I haven't figured out exactly what happened that gave rise to those errors.

I am assuming that the whole xorg itself broke and I got my desktop back by using a live disk and chrooting (yeah - had to do that as its hard to connect to internet from terminal and its lot more easier to connect to internet from live disk and copy resolv.conf from here to there).

So, after creating a live disk and in Try Ubuntu mode, I chrooted into old partitions (I followed the guide here) and did

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg

apt-get install --reinstall gdm gnome-desktop-environment xorg

Then I changed my default display manager to gdm at /etc/X11/default-display-manager by changing this line (I think this step is not needed if after a restart your desktop is working fine, but I basically did a couple more things than said above and broke lightdm too, so I had to change to gdm!)

/usr/sbin/lightdm

to

/usr/sbin/gdm

and restarted. Well, unity is working and I got my desktop back working.