I have just finished a cooker update and encountered the X Server
missing modules issue. Following Paulos instructions I was able to
reinstall the packages needed to fix the problem, from the current
mirror, ie: dns resolution was working fine. Having reinstalled the
packages I rebooted the system to see if I could get into kdm and hence
kde3 (kde4 still won't start, but need to go to a tty session to get the
messages) which I was able to do. But when I started Thunderbird I was
not able to connect to my isp's mail server because of a dns failure. I
had disconnect and reconnect the network to get the dns back again. Why
did it work under tty but not under X?

regards,
Steve