Re: Summary: How to fix the gnome startup issues
Thanks very much for this report Luis. I'm sure it will help a lot of
people. Unfortunately I don't have any of the issues you mention.
1) I did not have /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc file.
2,3) I tried a new user without any files except for .bashrc and
.bash_profile
4) No process of gc* of oa*
5) Maybe an issue for me. I _MUST_ use xfree 4.3.X due to my hardware in
the PowerBook 17 (nVidia GeForce4 440 Go 64M).
Any other suggestions would be welcome. Thanks for your efforts.
Cheers,
Brendan Simon.
[snip]
Did you try starting X from the console without using GDM|KDM or any other
login screen manager?
(for newbies who might be reading)
Stop X and gdm or kdm or whatever... then from a console:
login: user
password: whatever
$> startx
Now, i know that "startx" is not present sometimes in some Debian
installations, but you get the idea...
Then once in X, "exec gnome-session" from a terminal.
That should work. If that doesn't, then it might be time to start turning
off sound drivers, and other X extensions (especially those that are not
necessary or that are needed only for fonts "bitmap" comes to mind...).
Another thing I do is that i remove "xfs" from my desktops. That's a waste
of time. Your X configuration should point to the paths from which it can
get fonts directly without using xfs.
Hope that helps in your case. And please report back your progress in
resolving this issue -- especially after you find a solution that works.
p.s. I will start using a different email client soon; just to make it
easier to manage the threads and the like.
----)(-----
Luis Mondesi
System Administrator
LatinoMixed.com
lemsx1@hotmail.com
"...The Mac does this so smoothly, it feels like an extension of your mind."
- Paula Speer, MacWorld Magazine 2003-04
Public signature: http://www.latinomixed.com/lems1/public-a.asc
Luis M wrote:
After struggling with about 5 boxes with this issues, plus reading other
people having the same issues, I decided to summarized what to do to solve
the infamous Gnome Startup Issue (where it just sits at the splash screen
forever). Read on:
You should take the steps in this order to make it work. Of course, you
should try to switch to a TTY ( CTRL+ALT+F1) and check what
.xsession-errors says to get a hint of why the splash screen it's hanging
forever. After that then try this (hopefully in this order). I can assure
you that this will solve your problems:
1. make sure that there is no /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc file. And if there is
one, make sure it's pointing to the right place. i.e. /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
-> /usr/shared/themes/Nuvola/gtk-2.0/gtkrc. I found the hard way that this
file was pointing to a gtk1.x theme and it was causing the splash screen
to just sit there forever (crashing gnome-session and gnome-panel).
2. rm -fr ~/.gnome* ~/.gconf* ~/.gtk* ~/.icons* ~/.themes*. In other
words, make sure that your gnome settings are reseted before login in.
The best thing to try is to create a dummy user with an empty $HOME and
login as that user to see if that helps. That will save you a lot of
hassle.
3. make sure there is no .Xdefaults in your $HOME, or any dot file that
sets session variables/parameters for X. Things like: .Xmodmap, .xsession,
.x-anything. This is the issue for the latest Knoppix distro (cdrom) that
it ships with Xfree86 4.3.x and it seems not to like a lot of those old
files laying from old home directories. The safest thing to do, of course,
is to move all files from $HOME to $HOME/old and then restart gdm/xdm/kdm
or whatever you use to start x. Note that starting X from the console
sometimes avoids this problems "startx", maybe because they skip
gnome-session altogether? go figure...
4. Turn off gconfd, oaf-anything, and all other processes that might be
running under your username from a TTY. gconftool-2 --shutdown will help,
but do "ps aux | grep username" to see what processes if any are running
under your username and kill those (killall -9 process). Make sure that
you re-check that your $HOME dot files are not there before restarting the
X server|gdm|xdm or whatever you use.
5. After making sure that you do have the latest gnome-2.4 packages from
"Sid" (dpkg --list | grep 2.4 | egrep ^i), if things still don't work
after doing all of the things said above, then downgrading from
xserver-xfree86 4.3.x to the "unstable" current versions 4.2.x will fix
your problems :-) I have seen some computers with different drivers that
work with Xfree4.3+gnome-2.4, but so far the computers that use "nv" or
"nvidia" drivers hang at the splash screen for whatever reason. When you
downgrade to xserver-xfree86 4.2, make sure that you set your mouse
protocol in /etc/X11/Xfree86-4 file to "PS/2" or "IMPS/2" and not "auto"
as this will prevent xserver-xfree86 4.2 from launching (or will launch
and your mouse won't work).
If things still don't work, then use KDE :-) nah, just kidding. But,
that's what I have experienced so far to be the culprit of the problem
(especially #1, that infamous gtkrc file laying around from some badly
broken theme or a gtk+1.x theme).
I hope this will help somebody out there and that this will be read over
and over for generations to come... :-D
p.s. esound (that piece of @#$@%) have problems when you set it to
auto_launch and a user have "Sound Server Startup" check in his/her
Preferences for sound. i.e. when /etc/esound/esd.conf is:
[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 5
spawn_wait_ms=100
To solve this, I usually set a "mandatory" option for all users to not
allow the sound server to start as they login and set the auto_spawn to 1
and -as to 3 (seconds); in other words, the esd daemon should auto spawn
when something needs sound, but quit after 3 seconds of not being used
(like when users logout and login as a different user, they won't see a
stupid message saying that the esound server did something stupid). The
command to set the mandatory setting to not start the sound server is,
plus a whole bunch of other things that you might like to lock up in Gnome
(if you have multiple workstations that you are responsible for) (you can
get an extensibly customizable script from
ftp://www.latinomixed.com/downloads/tied_gnome.sh.gz):
GCONFTOOL=gconftool-2
set_bool_mandatory()
{
# @arg $1 path
# @arg $2 bool (true|false)
$GCONFTOOL --direct \
--config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory \
--type bool --set $1 "$2"
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo "Setting $1 failed"
fi
}
set_bool_defaults()
{
# @arg $1 path
# @arg $2 bool (true|false)
$GCONFTOOL --direct \
--config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
--type bool --set $1 "$2"
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo "Setting $1 failed"
fi
}
unset_mandatory()
{
# @arg $1 path
$GCONFTOOL --direct \
--config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory \
--unset $1
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo "Unsetting $1 failed"
fi
}
unset_mandatory "/desktop/gnome/sound/event_sounds"
set_bool_mandatory "/desktop/gnome/sound/enable_esd" "true"
# the following line turns on the sound events by default to all users
# so that they can turn it off if they could care less about this
set_bool_defaults "/desktop/gnome/sound/event_sounds" "true"
Again, I hope this helps somebody... Cheers!
----)(-----
Luis Mondesi
System Administrator
LatinoMixed.com
lemsx1@hotmail.com
"...The Mac does this so smoothly, it feels like an extension of your
mind." - Paula Speer, MacWorld Magazine 2003-04
Public signature: http://www.latinomixed.com/lems1/public-a.asc
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