Hi, I've been running sarge and gnome till the other day, when I decided to upgrade to etch, so following an article, I changed the apt sources and updated debian, which works and boots ok, except for gnome.

The X server starts up ok, and load to the login screen, but whenever you try to log in, whether it be KDE or gnome, failsafe or terminal, this error window comes up...

"Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds. If you have not logged out yourself, this could mean that there is some installation problem, or that you may be out of disk space.
Try logging in with on of the failsafe sessions to see if you can fix this problem."

There is a checkbox to display the contents of the ~/.xsession-errors file. This says

/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: Registering your session with wtmp and utmp
/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: /Default: Running /usr/bin/sesreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/lib/gdm/:0.xservers -h "" -l ":0" "<myusername>"
/etc/gdm/xsession: Beginning session setup...
xlib: Connection to ":0.0" refused by server
xlib: Protocol not supported by server

<myusername> is obviously my user name...

I've spent a couple days trying to suss it out with no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

AJuice

/edit
I just found a person with the exact same problem here...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=92344

I presume you're thrown back to a terminal after the failed session. Can you start an X-session manually then? If not, check if the X-server is actually installed. Use aptitude in a rootterminal, press the / key, enter "xserver-xorg" as searchstring (w/o the ") and use the n key to step through the results. Install the package with the + key on the numerical pad. Press g twice to install. The package is installed if an i is shown in front of the package.

No, sorry I should've mentioned. After it fails to open a session, it goes back to the login screen. xserver is installed and appears to be configured and working (at least up till the login screen) correctly. I dpkg-reconfigure'd it just to make sure the settings we all ok, and that it starts fine..

AJuice