Linux Mint fails to start X automatically after update, but X still works

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After some update and reboot, X fails to start.

I don't get any errors or warnings from the console, after the last service has started, nothing happens. I can then switch to any terminal I'd like, log in and start X with startx. This works perfectly fine. Prior to this there doesn't seem to be any attempt to start X (I removed the logs in /var/log/X* and rebooted, no logs were then generated after I logged in).

I'm now running 3.5.0-17-generic on Linux Mint 14 Nadia (XFCE). I'm using the proprietary Nvidia drivers (although bear in mind X starts perfectly fine with startx).

How can I make X start automatically again? What is the reason I experience this behaviour from the system?

Edit: I can add that I've tried to reinstall the proprietary Nvidia drivers (and they installed successfully), I get hardware acceleration and everything seems to work fine after I've started X with startx.

Second edit: I have S30mdm in /etc/rc2.d/ which points to /etc/init.d/mdm

Best Answer

In some occasions Infinality font rendering can cause problems when loading the Display Manager.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=208&t=136307

If you have infinality installed and reconfiguring mdm doesn't works, try to:

sudo apt-get remove fontconfig-infinality

you can also reconfigure mdm as follows:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure mdm

this way it won't be necessary to install mdm again, task that may become hard

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