Strange X freezing problem 1

[glover]

I've got an up-to-date linux machine running RH 7.3 and XFree86-4.2.0-8. A very odd problem occurs. If I hit CTRL+ALT+F1 - F7, it will switch. But then as soon as I switch back to CTRL+ALT+F7, the display locks up.
Remotely logging in shows linux is still running but on the physical console it is totally unresponsive. Killing X and allowing X to restart will unfreeze the machine... until switching terminals again.
Anybody heard of this? Are there any config or log files in particular I should be looking at?
Thanks.

 

[venkman]

I noticed similar problems when I installed Ximian-Gnome. When I uninstalled Ximian (and then installed only the components necessary to run Ximian Evolution), it worked fine. Other than that, I've never seen this problem.

-Venkman

 

[glover]

Venkman, hi! Thanks for the response. My system does indeed use Ximian Gnome. If its necessary, I'm willing to uninstall X-G to fix this. Any tips on how to best approach uninstalling X-G?

 

[venkman]

I'm sorry to report that I do not have any good tips on uninstalling Ximian-Gnome. When I had X-G, the freezing problem became so severe that it corrupted my file system and I was unable to figure out how to recover from it. I ended up reinstalling everything (it conveniently happened when I got a brand new, much bigger hard drive, so a reinstall wasn't that big a deal for me at the time).

If you go to the ximian news group (not sure where it is, but you should find it on a search from google or from their website), there are instructions on uninstalling X-G. When I read them months ago, there was big argument on the news group over it (one of the developers actually threatened to punch one of the users over it). Apparently, uninstalling is a difficult process, and the team at Ximian has not addressed it yet to my knowledge. However, one of the users did post a way that supposedly works.

As I said before you can install all the neccessary components for Ximian Evolution without a problem, but if you install the other components for Ximian Gnome things may become unstable. You might want to just try uninstalling through redhat's rpm tool all Gnome components and then reinstall them using Redhat's standard components. Of course, that's not a very elegant solution, so I would try to find some other way first.

Let me know if you do find those instructions though because I am curious about the solution.

-Venkman