How do you troubleshoot Syllable?

[Nobber]

I'm running Syllable 0.6.3 using QEMU. Or I should be, but I can't do anything with it at the moment. Here's what happens.

1. Syllable appears to boot OK, and the login prompt appears.
2. I select 'root', enter the password, and click 'Login'.
3. The screen goes black for a couple of seconds, and then the Syllable desktop background appears, but...
4. ...the mouse pointer's gone, and there are no desktop icons or panel.
5. The mouse pointer, icons and panel remain absent.
6. Go to 5.

I am a Syllable newbie. How do I go about finding out what's wrong?

(History: Syllable was initially working, but at 640x480. I upped the res to 1024x768, which hung the VM. I quit QEMU and rebooted, and the above happened.)

[M-Saunders]

You could look at the kernel log, although you'd need to mount the Syllable partition from another Syllable installation (eg the Syllable Live CD). Try re-installing and switching to 800x600 video mode -- it could be that QEMU gets into a tizzy with a higher resolution.

M

[Nobber]

You could look at the kernel log, although you'd need to mount the Syllable partition from another Syllable installation (eg the Syllable Live CD). Try re-installing and switching to 800x600 video mode -- it could be that QEMU gets into a tizzy with a higher resolution.

The odd thing is that the login screen itself displays happily at 1024x768, it's just logging in seems to cause the problem.

I'll get the Syllable live CD and see if the kernel log reveals anything. Any idea what file (or whatever) I would need to edit to get the video back down to 800x600 or 640x480?

[Nobber]

Running now with the live CD, I'm looking at /var/log on the Syllable hard disk image. There are four files in there:

desktop dhcpc kernel syslog

And they're all empty. <scratches head>