I just encountered an extremely odd issue with my Fedora 18 this morning:
- First, I noticed that the grey background of the log in screen had been replaced by the blue "falling stars" image that's the default desktop wallpaper for the OS.
- Secondly, when logging into my usual Cinnamon session, the menu bar had switched from the Windows-esque "start" menu located at the bottom of the screen to a Gnome 2.x style menu at the top.
- Finally, when I tried to navigate to Delicious in Google Chrome, the screen blanked and returned to the log in menu!
Checking the Xorg log file showed a segmentation fault had occurred:
[ 192.214] (EE)
[ 192.215] (EE) Backtrace:
[ 192.230] (EE) 0: /usr/bin/Xorg (OsLookupColor+0x139) [0x472509]
[ 192.230] (EE) 1: /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (__restore_rt+0x0) [0x3f6080efff]
[ 192.230] (EE)
[ 192.230] (EE) Segmentation fault at address 0x0
[ 192.230]
Fatal server error:
[ 192.230] Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
[ 192.230]
[ 192.230] (EE)
Please consult the Fedora Project support
at http://wiki.x.org
for help.
[ 192.230] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
[ 192.230] (EE)
[ 192.236] (II) evdev: Power Button: Close
[ 192.236] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev"
[ 192.243] (II) evdev: Power Button: Close
[ 192.243] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev"
[ 192.257] (II) evdev: Sleep Button: Close
[ 192.257] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev"
[ 192.274] (II) evdev: Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad: Close
[ 192.274] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev"
[ 192.318] (II) UnloadModule: "synaptics"
[ 192.332] (II) evdev: Built-in iSight: Close
[ 192.332] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev"
[ 192.345] (II) evdev: Logitech USB Receiver: Close
[ 192.345] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev"
[ 192.367] (II) evdev: Logitech USB Receiver: Close
[ 192.367] (II) UnloadModule: "evdev"
[ 192.877] Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
Thinking this would be some strange transient error, I logged in again and found that I was able to replicate the issue by simply visiting delicious.com again! Googling around on the subject pulled up a couple of forum posts that suggested adding / amending the Files section in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to the following:
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib64/nvidia/xorg"
ModulePath "/usr/lib64/xorg/modules"
EndSection
Once I restarted the X Server, I was greeted by the original log in screen with the grey background. Logging into the system yielded another success: my Windows-style menu had returned! The final check was also a success: I was able to visit delicious.com without the X Server crashing.
