gnome 1.4 startup problems

[David Mores]

I and apparently many other folks are having startup problems with gnome 1.4. Symtoms seem to be the same - i.e. gray sreen with X in middle, but GUI login never comes up, two gdm and one X process running, but no gdmlogin. After starting, stoping, killing, resetting a number of times, something happens and the GUI login comes up. However, there seems to be no reliable way to startup gnome. Review of the other threads that report this problem seem to end with no specific explaination or resolution to this problem.

Can anyone really help out here?

[Denver Osborn]

Are you attempting to manually start it or did you modify /etc/rc.config.d/deskopt from DESKTOP=CDE to DESKTOP=GNOME

what model of box and os rev?

-denver

[David Mores]

The desktop default has been set to gnome for system startup, but fails to come up on boot up as described previously.

It is then that the manual intervention starts that with enough persistence, as described, may finally get it working, but not knowing why or how.

The OS is HP-UX 11.11 on a C160.

[Steven E. Protter]

Check the environment of a working user versus a nonworking one.

env > /tmp/env.username

env > /tmp/env.user2name

diff /tmp/env.username /tmp/env.user2name

It might have something to do with how the DISPLAY variable is set.

SEP

[Myles McManus]

The problem occurs before any user has a chance to log in right? Do you get any error message when the X screen pops up?
Change /etc/rc.config.d/desktop back to boot into CDE. Does that work ok? Switch back to gnome, still the same problem? What entries are there in the syslog? Check that the system can resolve its own hostname. Go down a runlevel and then back up, any error messages found?

[Alex Glennie]

hi David,

I have the same problem and suspect it's a "feature" ... you could via the gdmconfig gui enable debugging under Expert -> Misc.

then see if we start seeing errors to /var/opt/gnome/gdm/*.logs are you seeing the following ?

Gdk-ERROR **: X connection to hpwin057.uksr.hp.com:7.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown). but that maybe a one off and not connected ...

It maybe this needs reporting to Ximian ?

Ooh nearly forgot does the Xserver become a zombie process ?

[David Mores]

Yes,before login. No messages on the screen, just a gray screen with an X in the center. However, the mouse does move the X - so X server seems to be working somewhat, but no GUI login. Changing init level 3-2-3 does not do anything useful. No messages in /var/opt/gnome/gdm log file. Xserver is not a zombie.

It would seem that gnome 1.4 is at least problematic for HP-UX.

Since gnome 2.0 is on the streets, it's not likely that 1.4 warrents much more attention. Does anyone know when it will be ready for HP-UX?

[Alex Glennie]

not so fast re gnome 2.0.... see
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x85145fe8b250d71190080090279cd0f9,00.html

[Mike Stroyan]

It is possible to work around the problem by making the X server use XDMCP to request a login screen. Edit /etc/opt/gnome/gdm/gdm.conf and change a few lines to enable XDMCP and change the X server startup. (Replace 'yourhostname' with your hostname.)

[xdmcp]
Enable=true

[servers]
0=/usr/bin/X11/X -fp tcp/:7000 -query yourhostname

This runs almost normally, but lacks the system admin tab since the login screen is for a remote display.

[Francis_12]

Hello,

I've exactly the same problem since i installed the ANSI-C compiler *after* having installed gnome1.4.

I suspect a shlib conflict. I've therefore uninstalled both products and installed 1) ANSI-C 2) gnome.

The concerned pure hp-ux && gnome shlibs are :

dynamic /usr/lib/libXext.3
dynamic /usr/lib/libX11.3
dynamic /usr/lib/libSM.2
dynamic /usr/lib/libICE.2
dynamic /usr/lib/libpam.1
dynamic /usr/lib/libc.2
dynamic /usr/lib/libm.2
dynamic /usr/lib/libXext.3
dynamic /usr/lib/libX11.3
dynamic /usr/lib/libSM.2

So maybe preserving them somewhere is interesting...

Hope this helps,

Bye.

F.

[Mathias Ihme]

Hi folks,

has anybody found the solution for the problem as I am in the same situation and I don't know how what to do.

Thanks

MI