Re: Lost window manager?

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 10:41:53AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:

 > try (as root) :
 > 
 >   update-alternatives --config x-window-manager
 > 
 > The reason is that debian uses the the alternatives mechanism to set the
 > windows manager (system wide)
 > 
 > For a per user change, you need to set a environment option, but i don't
 > remember the exact name.

 Ewwww.

 Perhaps I forgot to mention that I'm using GDM to log in and I'm
 selecting "GNOME Session" there.  If I select "Debian", the X session
 manager is used instead of the GNOME session manager.  The X Session
 Manager leaves me with a desktop where I can't do anything since
 there's no window manager running :-)  And the x-window-manager
 alternative points to /usr/bin/wmaker.

 My problem _now_ is that I did something which upset gnome-wm or
 gnome-session (I don't know which -- I'm gessing the later) and I don't
 get a window manager after logging with a GNOME session.

 From the gnome-wm docs:

    PERSISTENT SETTINGS

       The program stores the current selection of a window manager in
       the gconf key /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/default

 $ set KEY=/desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/default
 $ gconftool --get $KEY
 /usr/bin/wmaker
 $ gconftool --type string --set $KEY waimea
 $ gconftool --get $KEY
 waimea
 $ gnome-wm 
 /usr/bin/WindowMaker fatal error: it seems that there is already a window manager running
 $ gconftool --get $KEY
 /usr/bin/wmaker

 The documentation and the implementation doesn't seem to have much to
 do with each other.  Setting the enviroment variable will work, but
 really don't want to set an environment variable.

 That still doesn't help me with the other problem: gnome-session not
 starting a window manager at all.  I though gnome-session just ran
 gnome-wm, but somehow I managed to convice it not to do that.

-- 
Marcelo