How do I start GNOME when loggin in?

[Paul Mancillas]

I just installed Red Hat 7.2 and I configured the Default desktop to be GNOME. When I boot up to run level 5 I get the GUI login screen. When I login I get a blue background with one window titled "xsm: Default" at the upper left of the screen and another window with white text on a black background, but no GNOME desktop. I have tried using the "switchdesk" command to set the default desktop to GNOME, but this did not fix the problem. Can anyone suggest something else to try?

Thanks,

Paul Mancillas

[Mark Fenton]

Paul,

Can you select GNOME from the drop-down session list in the GUI login screen?

Can you verify that gdm (the GNOME display manager) is running?

thoughts...

Mark

[Paul Mancillas]

Mark,
I can choose GNOME from the drop-down menu but this has no effect. Also, I did confirm that gdm is running. Any more suggestions?

Thanks,

Paul

[Jeffrey S. Sims]

If you are already running xwindows, you can run the switchdesk utility and choose which environment you want to use. then you logout and restart your session to use your new choice.

If you are not using xwindows you need to run the setup command and configure xwindows then use the startx command to start xwindows.

Hope this helps. (assign points as necessary)

[Paul Mancillas]

I ran the "switchdesk" command and set the default desktop to GNOME, logged out and then back in, but this did not work. I still got just the X11 GUI. I have changed the ".Xclients" and ".Xclients-defaults" files to contain just the line "exec gnome-session" but this did not help either. The current status is that I boot up to run level 5 and see the Red Hat GUI login screen (with blue background), I type my user name/password and then I get a small window in the upper left corner that says "xsm:Default" and one UNIX window in middle of the screen that is titled "user@hostname:~". Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Paul

[Mark Fenton · Accepted solution]

Paul, from your description, it looks to me that you are running the "default" session via xsm. (man xsm for more info)

For whatever reason, xsm is not finding a valid xsession file in your user directory, and is using the system defaults.

If gnome attempted to launch and failed, you should have some errors in $HOME/.xsession-errors . If so, perhaps these would shed some light on what's happening.

When you installed your system, did you select any other Xwindows interfaces besides GNOME and if so, do they work? (KDE, whatever...)

Can you connect to the 7.2 box via the network and run X remotely (ReflectionX, eXceed, VNC, whatever)?

There's bound to be a logical explication for what's happening....

Mark

[Paul Mancillas]

Mark, you hit the nail on the head. I checked /root and there was no .xsession file. I created one with the line "exec gnome-session" and this fixed the problem. Now when I log in I get a GNOME desktop. I did check the .xsession-errors file before but it was empty. I'm still wondering why the GNOME desktop did not start up correctly before since I specified GNOME as the default desktop during the 7.2 installation process. I have a 6.1 system running GNOME that does not have a .xsession file and it starts the GNOME desktop when I login. Maybe Red Hat changed something in 7.2 so that it requires the .xsession file now. Thanks for your help, now I can get some sleep.

Paul

[K.C. Chan]

Paul, if you're at run-level3 exit out of current desktop. vi .Xclients (maybe a newfile for you) and enter the name of the desktop you want to run. then save it. chmod 555 .Xclients
then startx. This should set what desktop to run. If you want to start this up automatically, just edit inittab to run-level 5 for default. Hope this helps.