Raquel Rice wrote:
I meant to say that when the machine is booted, one of the last messages which is displayed on the screen is that xserver has been started. I am then at the command line. I'd like to be able to start Gnome, but don't know how to get there. Do I need to change run-levels? Or ... ?
No need to bother with run levels.If there are no error messages with that last message (such as "No screens found" or "Can't initialize pointer", etc), then it sounds like X is starting but is failing to find any clients to run (such as a window manager, like icewm or wmaker, or such as a desktop environment, like KDE or Gnome), and so is promptly exiting.
This will occur if you have installed the basic X setup, but have not installed any window managers/environments.
apt-get install icewm wmaker kde gnome gdm kdmshould get you a fairly nice selection of tools to get started with. (gdm is Gnome's graphical login manager, whereas kdm is the KDE version of same.)
If you just want to verify that this is indeed the problem, at a prompt type "which xterm". If you get nothing, that means no xterm is installed, which implies that indeed you have only a partial installation of X-related stuff. If you get something like "/usr/bin/X11/xterm", then you can put "xterm &" into the file "~/.xinitrc" (you'll probably have to create this file), and then try "startx" (or reboot) to start X. You should now get a graphical screen with a single xterm window on it, with no window manager controls (the corner areas where you can click to maximize, close, etc). Typing "exit" in that xterm should shut down X (or alternatively, press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace). (You may want to delete/modify this "~/.xinitrc" file after your test, or next time you start X (either with "startx" or by choosing "Default" in gdm/kdm) you'll just get the xterm still, without any window manager/environment.)
-- Kent