[Gllug] Delaying X startup at boot

[Dylan]

Hi All,

This might seem to be a paradoxical issue, but it seems that I need to delay 
starting the X server at boot time. The situation is that if the boot process 
proceeds at its own pace, it 'sticks' at the point where X starts taking 
control of the display and keyboard. X seems to get part way through its 
initialisation and then the machine locks - blank display (monitor switches 
to powersaving mode, going by the flashing of its power indicator;) no 
response to keyboard; no response to ssh connection (no reply to ping, 
either, so it's possible that the network hasn't completely started before 
the lockup.)

Now, if I pause the grub boot menu before allowing boot, the same happens, but 
if I boot to runlevel 3 and then manually switch to 5, or simply leave a 
video DVD in the drive so the drive polling slows the boot process, the 
graphics comes up as expected.

At the moment, I'm going with the former workaround, but how do I convince the 
machine to wait until later in the boot process to start the X server/kdm?

I'm using Suse 11.1 on an amd x86-64 machine with an ATI graphics card (PCI-E) 
I've tried experimenting with the PCI options in the BIOS, but am unsure of 
some of them and so don't want to do too much - I've already had to do a 
factory reset once because of such fiddling ...)

Thanks

Dx
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