FC5: Users successfully boot to X (Gnome), but root does not.

[Bob St John]

Folks,

In my FC5 x86_64 Gnome environment, users can successfully boot to the
graphical mode, but root cannot - shortly after root login, X begins to
start (I see the FC5 post-login splash screen), but then I'm left with
only a mouse pointer (the pointer is moveable) on a blue background.

I'm quite sure this is another symptom of the problem described below
(which was never resolved.)

Any ideas on what may be wrong?

Bob St. John

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 21:05 -0400, Bob St John wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 18:50 -0400, G.Wolfe Woodbury wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 05:39:56PM -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> > > > It seems that the prefered greeter is kdm, which you doesn't have.
> > > 
> > > The prefered greeter for FC/Gnome is gdm although it is possible that
> > > ths got mixed up.
> > > 
> > > Bob should post his /etc/X11/prefdm as is.
> > 
> > The real problem here is that /etc/sysconfig/desktop is blank.
> > I had this after the recent updates, and discovered that there was nothing
> > defined in /etc/sysconfig/desktop.
> > 
> > Adding:
> > DISPLAYMANAGER=GNOME
> > 
> > cured the problem.
> > -- 
> 
> 
> Well, I noticed that /etc/sysconfig/desktop existed but with zero
> content, but I didn't know what to add. So, following the advice above
> it now contains DISPLAYMANAGER=GNOME, but the problem remains.
> 
> As Arthur suggested, here is the content of the /etc/X11/prefdm file:
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> 
> PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
> 
> # shut down any graphical boot that might exist
> if [ -x /usr/bin/rhgb-client ]; then
>     /usr/bin/rhgb-client -quit
> fi
> 
> # We need to source this so that the login screens get translated
> [ -f /etc/profile.d/lang.sh ] && . /etc/profile.d/lang.sh
> 
> # Run preferred X display manager
> preferred=
> if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/desktop ]; then
> 	. /etc/sysconfig/desktop
> 	if [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = GNOME ]; then
> 		preferred=/usr/sbin/gdm
> 	elif [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = KDE ]; then
> 		preferred=/usr/bin/kdm
> 	elif [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = XDM ]; then
> 	        preferred=/usr/bin/xdm
>         elif [ -n "$DISPLAYMANAGER" ]; then
> 		preferred=$DISPLAYMANAGER
> 	fi
> fi
> 
> shopt -s execfail
> 
> # If we're in early-login mode and something is running, bail out
> if grep -q early-login /proc/cmdline 2> /dev/null ; then
> 	if [ -n "$preferred" ]; then
> 		pidof $preferred >/dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0
> 	fi
> 	pidof gdm-binary >/dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0
> 	pidof kdm >/dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0
> 	pidof xdm >/dev/null 2>&1 && exit 0
> fi
> 
> if [ -n "$preferred" ]; then
> 	$preferred "$@" >/dev/null 2>&1
> 	if [ $? -ne 127 ]; then
> 		exec $0 "$@"
> 		exit $?
> 	fi
> fi
> 
> # Fallbacks, in order
> gdm "$@" >/dev/null 2>&1
> if [ $? -ne 127 ]; then
> 	exec $0 "$@"
> 	exit $?
> fi
> kdm "$@" >/dev/null 2>&1
> if [ $? -ne 127 ]; then
> 	exec $0 "$@"
> 	exit $?
> fi
> xdm "$@" >/dev/null 2>&1
> if [ $? -ne 127 ]; then
> 	exec $0 "$@"
> 	exit $?
> fi
> 
> # catch all exit error
> exit 1
> 
>