xrdb hangs--except for root
Hi gang! Can anybody help me with this conundrum?
I have a hamm installation on a Toshiba 4080 XCDT, and I installed
XFree86 3.3.5 to get the vid driver for it.
(BTW the last thing I was doing before I started spending all my time
on this problem was trying to install Corel WP8, which was demanding
certain old libs or symlinks to such. Maybe that's what cause the
trouble? Anyway:)
Symptom is, xdm pulls up a graphcial login prompt which works fine if
I log in as root. If I log in as a normal user, I get no window
manager, no xterm, no nuthin--just a mouse pointer that moves.
With some help from the nice people on the debian-user-de list, I've
figured out this much: xrdb is getting called by a 'for' loop in the
global Xsession script, once for each file in /etc/X11/Xresources.
There are three of those: xbase-clients, xfree86-common und xterm.
For a normal user, xrdb hangs each time (pulls full 99% CPU use in
xtop--what's it doing?). When I kill it (from a different virtual
console), the Xsession script resumes control and runs xrdb again.
After the third and last xrdb call is killed, an Xsession seems to
start --I see xterm and xclock and a nice root background color same
as root gets--but then after ~3/4 of a second the whole X server
crashes. Whereupon xdm restarts it and the Login prompt is back.
I read 'man xrdb', which says things about cpp, but no clues. I've
checked all the permissions I can think of, and as far as I can see
the users should be able to read and run anything root can in the
/etc/X11 tree.
Grateful for any hints,
T.
-- Tony Crawford
-- tc@crawfords.de
-- Phone: +49-3341-30 99 99
-- Fax: +49-3341-30 99 98
"La idea de un Dios sabio, todopoderoso y que, además, nos ama, es una
de las creaciones más audaces de la literatura fantástica."
-- Jorge Luis Borges
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