On Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 04:38:35PM -0700, John McBride wrote:
> Mike Werner wrote:
> >
> > John McBride wrote:
> After running this command (update-rc.d -f gdm remove), rebooting, and
> typing "startx", I get a grey stipple screen with no window manager.
> There's probably more to it, or my install has gone bad in some other
> way.
>
> This kind of proves my point -- to get something installed properly
> under Debian, you need to know a slew of configuration and config file
> details.
Um. No, you broke something, it's your fault <g>.
Seriously, what's happened is that your window manager configuration has
gotten hosed, and we're not quite sure what's going on. So you now go
to the list and ask those annoying people who know everything (wait a
minute, I resemble that remark....).
20 questions:
- Do you have a window manager installed?
- What's /etc/alternatives/x-window-manager pointing to?
- What's your /etc/X11/Xsession file look like? I suspect your
problem has something to do with this because:
o startx is a shell script which calls xinit
o xinit is a binary which calls /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
o xinitrc is a shell script which calls /etc/X11/Xsession
o there will be a test on this
/etc/X11/Xsession falls through a number of cases, one of which is
testing for /usr/bin/x-window-manager. If this file (or the link chain
it points to) doesn't exist, you've got problems. Though you should get
a failsafe (xterm only) session. Weird. Though I've heard of it
before.
What I suspect is that there's a problem launching your preferred
window manager. Which is it?
Try as an alternative:
$ startx /usr/bin/x-window-manager -- :0
or
$ startx your-preferred-window-manager -- :0
...and see what happens.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
Evangelist, Opensales, Inc. http://www.opensales.org
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Debian GNU/Linux rocks!
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ K5: http://www.kuro5hin.org
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