Solved [Buildroot] - Unable to run server "X": No such file or directory

[TheSystemGuy]

(I'm very new to all this and only set up an account here just to ask this one question and delete it).

Don't know if this is the right place to post (where should I put this?) but it's time to throw my hat into the ringer. I'll be the first to admit I'm way in over my head. I'm building an i386 distro from scratch using Buildroot (which I'm very new to) and so far it has been problems. The latest problem is I'm unable to get the Xorg Server to start despite having configuring the package and Xorg is starting on boot. TWM also won't start and complains that it cannot open display ""

And I also configured networking by Lynx can't connect like at all. I don't know whats going on like at all. I know I did something wrong but I don't know what I did wrong. What packages do I need to get networking working? How do I fix the broken Xserver?

 

[kc1di]

Hello @TheSystemGuy
Welcome to the Linux. org forum. Sorry can't be of much help with your questions but I'm sure someone here will be able to. in the meantime enjoy!

 

[Condobloke]

I'm very new to all this and only set up an account here just to ask this one question and delete it).

Welcome, and goodbye

 

[Brickwizard]

OK this may sound obvious to some, I386 is a 32 bit set up so
DID you
download and install the 32 bit edition of xorge? [https://pkgs.org/download/xorg-x11-libX11-32bit ]

and i found this on a Debian forum

Twm does not support the protocol to replace window manager. Therefore you will have to kill the old one, and start twm. Also you should not start an X11 server, it is already running. So just kill existing wm, and run twm.

 

[TheSystemGuy]

I think Buildroot fetches the 32-bit version of XORG and compiles it; I would be getting incompatible binary errors from the kernel if that wasn't the case. And as far as I know; there is no other window manager running as Xorg is unavailable. I even looked in Htop and don't see Xorg running

I did compile the Buildroot system from a Debian guest but I don't know what else could be the cause. I'll probably keep this account instead of deleting it as I'm still rather new to Linux. I did dabble in it multiple times.

 

[Brickwizard]

I don't know what else could be the cause. I'll probably keep this account instead of deleting it as I'm still rather new to Linux

Keep the account open is not a bad idea, we have members scattered throughout the world, so many will either be in bed or not up long, and time passes more may chip in with their thoughts

 

[osprey]

(I'm very new to all this and only set up an account here just to ask this one question and delete it).

Don't know if this is the right place to post (where should I put this?) but it's time to throw my hat into the ringer. I'll be the first to admit I'm way in over my head. I'm building an i386 distro from scratch using Buildroot (which I'm very new to) and so far it has been problems. The latest problem is I'm unable to get the Xorg Server to start despite having configuring the package and Xorg is starting on boot. TWM also won't start and complains that it cannot open display ""

And I also configured networking by Lynx can't connect like at all. I don't know whats going on like at all. I know I did something wrong but I don't know what I did wrong. What packages do I need to get networking working? How do I fix the broken Xserver?

Here is a listing of xorg dependencies in debian which would be similar in other distros:

$ apt depends xorg
xorg
  Depends: xserver-xorg (>= 1:7.7+24)
  Depends: libgl1
  Depends: libgl1-mesa-dri
  Depends: libglu1-mesa
  Depends: xfonts-base
  Depends: xfonts-100dpi
  Depends: xfonts-75dpi
  Depends: xfonts-scalable
  Depends: x11-apps
  Depends: x11-session-utils
  Depends: x11-utils
  Depends: x11-xkb-utils
  Depends: x11-xserver-utils
  Depends: xauth
  Depends: xinit
  Depends: xfonts-utils
  Depends: xkb-data
  Depends: xorg-docs-core
 |Depends: xterm

The xterm dependency is not essential if there is another terminal emulator, but it's wise to leave it as a dependency.

As for using the pkgs.org website mentioned in post post #4, I advise not to use it, but to use the official packages from the distribution that you are working with. The pkgs.org site has a number of problems which you can research. You have been warned

For networking you need a networking manager such as the ifupdown package, systemd-networkd, connman, NetworkManager. Only one should be installed and made active, otherwise they tend to mess with each other's configuration files and break networking.

To get better help, it would help readers if you supplied information about the distro, the tools you are using, the commands you have used and the commands that have failed with their error messages from the screen output or the logs.

 

[TheSystemGuy]

To get better help, it would help readers if you supplied information about the distro, the tools you are using, the commands you have used and the commands that have failed with their error messages from the screen output or the logs.

The distro in question is custom made using Buildroot as seen in the title. I did include xterm as I was worried Buildroot wouldn't fetch dependencies for me. Clearly Buildroot is not fetching dependencies. I tried navigating the menus to find all the deps but got lost rather quickly. I did select Conman as NetworkManager is not available in Buildroot. The guest that compiled it is Debian x64. If necessary, my Buildroot .config will now be sent.

P.S, the reason why I'm using Buildroot is because there's just not many options for building distros out there. I was reccomended Buildroot. I know there's no easy option to build a Linux distro.

 

[osprey]

The distro in question is custom made using Buildroot as seen in the title. I did include xterm as I was worried Buildroot wouldn't fetch dependencies for me. Clearly Buildroot is not fetching dependencies. I tried navigating the menus to find all the deps but got lost rather quickly. I did select Conman as NetworkManager is not available in Buildroot. The guest that compiled it is Debian x64. If necessary, my Buildroot .config will now be sent.

P.S, the reason why I'm using Buildroot is because there's just not many options for building distros out there. I was reccomended Buildroot. I know there's no easy option to build a Linux distro.

Thanks for the details provided. Buildroot certainly looks like an interesting project. I haven't used it but a few thoughts arise which may or may not be helpful. Here goes.

Interestingly, the manual does not appear to provide any information on xorg or the X server. I used a search function for those terms throughout the manual but was unable to see any reference to them.

It may be that xorg in Buildroot is simply a reduced version because its focus is on embedded systems, that is, rather small systems which usually run without a GUI. If that's the case, perhaps their fairly stripped down xorg is a version which has specifically deleted what they may have considered unnecessary dependencies. That doesn't mean it shouldn't work though. If they've included xorg, presumably is does work.

You mentioned in post #5 that it appears to compile. Xorg is the server, and you selected twm as the window manager, so that looks to be in order to me.

Looking through your config, I noticed that there were a number of XORG configurations which were not selected for the build including these:

BR2_PACKAGE_XSERVER_XORG_SERVER_KDRIVE_EVDEV is not set
BR2_PACKAGE_XSERVER_XORG_SERVER_KDRIVE_KBD is not set
BR2_PACKAGE_XSERVER_XORG_SERVER_KDRIVE_MOUSE is not set

I can't say how relevant they are not having done a configuration myself, but it may be worth going over the configuration details from the initial selection descriptions and including more of the XORG configurations which may pull in elements that eventually get the xorg server to run. That's about all I can think of at the moment.

 

[TheSystemGuy]

Thanks for the details provided. Buildroot certainly looks like an interesting project. I haven't used it but a few thoughts arise which may or may not be helpful. Here goes.

Interestingly, the manual does not appear to provide any information on xorg or the X server. I used a search function for those terms throughout the manual but was unable to see any reference to them.

It may be that xorg in Buildroot is simply a reduced version because its focus is on embedded systems, that is, rather small systems which usually run without a GUI. If that's the case, perhaps their fairly stripped down xorg is a version which has specifically deleted what they may have considered unnecessary dependencies. That doesn't mean it shouldn't work though. If they've included xorg, presumably is does work.

You mentioned in post #5 that it appears to compile. Xorg is the server, and you selected twm as the window manager, so that looks to be in order to me.

Looking through your config, I noticed that there were a number of XORG configurations which were not selected for the build including these:

BR2_PACKAGE_XSERVER_XORG_SERVER_KDRIVE_EVDEV is not set
BR2_PACKAGE_XSERVER_XORG_SERVER_KDRIVE_KBD is not set
BR2_PACKAGE_XSERVER_XORG_SERVER_KDRIVE_MOUSE is not set

I can't say how relevant they are not having done a configuration myself, but it may be worth going over the configuration details from the initial selection descriptions and including more of the XORG configurations which may pull in elements that eventually get the xorg server to run. That's about all I can think of at the moment.

Given the limited documentation and the fact it's for embedded systems (I mainly wanted to make a desktop distro and I don't know of any options to do so), it's probably best that we stop now. If there's any way to make a distro (either from Debian or from scratch) that isn't as hard as Buildroot, please let me know.

I thank everyone, including osprey for the help.

 

[wizardfromoz]

G;day @TheSystemGuy and welcome to linux.org.

There is Linux From Scratch, I don't know if you have looked at that, yet.

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

I have not used it, but it is well-established.

Good luck.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[TheSystemGuy]

G;day @TheSystemGuy and welcome to linux.org.

There is Linux From Scratch, I don't know if you have looked at that, yet.

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

I have not used it, but it is well-established.

Good luck.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

I've pretty well aware of LFS and I'll go ahead and try that instead of Buildroot.

Thank you, @wizardfromoz

 

[Brickwizard]

or you could take a minimum build, such as Damn Small Linux, and rebuild it with the packages you preferrer.

 

[osprey]

Given the limited documentation and the fact it's for embedded systems (I mainly wanted to make a desktop distro and I don't know of any options to do so), it's probably best that we stop now. If there's any way to make a distro (either from Debian or from scratch) that isn't as hard as Buildroot, please let me know.

I thank everyone, including osprey for the help.

Perhaps consider using the debian docs to create your own debian based system. The manual for the whole project is here: https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/html/live-manual/index.en.html. It's a rather monumental and perhaps daunting read, however, if you skim, and read the "For the impatient" section at the start of the document and/or skip to the Examples section at the end and see what can be done quite economically, you may be able to get something that satisfies you.

There is an example of a personalised image which has been successfully built here a number of times in a number of versions though it can take a little time to go through the tutorials.

 

[TheSystemGuy]

Perhaps consider using the debian docs to create your own debian based system. The manual for the whole project is here: https://live-team.pages.debian.net/live-manual/html/live-manual/index.en.html. It's a rather monumental and perhaps daunting read, however, if you skim, and read the "For the impatient" section at the start of the document and/or skip to the Examples section at the end and see what can be done quite economically, you may be able to get something that satisfies you.

There is an example of a personalised image which has been successfully built here a number of times in a number of versions though it can take a little time to go through the tutorials.

I'll give that a go along with LFS. I don't mind a good challenge and I don't mind reading. Thanks everyone. Hats off to you all. Until next time.

Addendum; tried to go the Debian Live route and found the guide is extremely out of date. I could only get lb build to generate one of two errors; either "package firmware linux has no installation candidate". If you attempt to work around it by installing the firmware manually, you will get "cp: cannot stat 'chroot/boot/vmlinuz-*': No such file or directory"

I'm on Debian 12 (bookworm)