I wrote many times about X server failed to start properly while using the Live CD and I blogged yesterday about X server failure in Gutsy Gibbon using Live CD and also using alternate CD. Live CD failed to start X server in both normal mode and safe graphics mode.
I came across this article in Ars Technica today. It’s about BulletProofX. BulletProofX projects aims at creating a new failsafe mode that will be used if the X server fails to start. It will be in a reduced (VESA 800×600/256 or VGA 640×480/16) graphics environment running a single application (displayconfig-gtk) for configuring the graphics devices.
The aim of the project is to eliminate the need to use dpkg-reconfigure command to reconfigure the X server. It’s a pain doing that (though it’s easy if you are a technical person) and that’s not going to go well with non tech users. The failsafe mode will launch if X server fails to start. You can also start it manually by specifying ‘xforcevesa’ via grub’s kernel cmdline option, by setting the XORG_FAILSAFE_MODE environment variable to a non-empty string, or by selecting the Failsafe option from the Greeter.
BulletProofX will initially be used in Ubuntu (GNOME) only since KDM (KDE windows manager) doesn’t support this capability. It’ll be ported to Kubuntu once KDM is fixed.
The sad part is, the failsafe mode won’t be used with Gutsy Live CD. If there is an Xorg startup failure when running the live-cd, then it should directly go to vesa mode without requiring any configuration step. That’s not the case for me. I hope they add it to the live CD in future.
Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Live CD, BulletProofX, X Server, GNOME, KDM