[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Lost window manager?



On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 03:00:50PM +0100, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:40:51AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> 
>  > That said, the update-alternatives still seem to be the correct way
>  > of changing the wm. 
> 
>  System wide, yes.  But the key in the gconf database is a per-user
>  setting.
> 
>  > Sure, but gnome-wm is a gnome thingy which know nothing about how
>  > debian works.
> 
>  Well, that's the problem.  After sending my previous mail I looked at
>  the gnome-wm script (yes, it's a script, I should have looked at it
>  sooner).  It basically does this:
> 
>     if there's a WINDOW_MANAGER environment variable, it uses that.
> 
>     if not, it uses the x-window-manager alternative
> 
>     if that's foobared, then fall back to a number of funny choices

Yes, there was some discution about this some time back.

>  And _then_ write the result to the key I mentioned earlier.  That means
>  you can change the key using gconf or whatever, and it will get
>  friendly overwritten by gnome-wm.
> 
>  > >  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.
> 
>  > Did you try the update-alternatives thingy ?
> 
>  No because I (now) know that that will change the window manager
>  gnome-wm picks, but my problem is that no window manager is starting at
>  all, not that I want to switch from one to the other.
> 
>  The fact that I can't change the window manager is secondary.  I'd like
>  to know what I did that made gnome-session stop launching a window
>  manager in the first place.

Maybe the gnome-wm you run gave an empty result (for whatever reason)
and thus overwrote the gconf key with it, or with a failing wm or
something such.

Have you tried tracing the calls (or looking at .gnome-errors, if that
still work, to see if there was something getting called and failing, or
just plain nothing getting called ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther



Reply to: