Fedora 7 - Existing User Problem
 

I have a separate /home partition which houses my 3 users (Me, Wifey & Boyo).

It is my habit, whenever a new version of Fedora comes out, to do a clean install over the last-but-one Fedora version (i.e FC7 replaces FC5 - that way I always have the previous - FC6 in this case - version to fall back on) and point the partitioner to the /home partition with the "preserve existing data" option set.

I did that with Fedora 7 and the install went just fine... (I do have a Dell dual core desktop but it all seemed to work with the default settings).

I went through the first-time-install process and set my user to be "mark" (me). The log-in screen accepted my password and started to load. It never gets beyond painting the background image (sometimes the top and bottom gnome panels load but without any menus or icons). I am unable to start any applications and right-click does nothing.

The last time I tried it the Software updates bubble appeared and (pirut?) allowed me to update the nine packages it wanted to update - so something is happening.

Is this due to a conflict with my FC6 gnome settings?

I am loathe to test this theory by trying to create another user (e.g. "test") as I do not want to mess up the user accounts and permissions of my other users. [What I mean by this is that "mark" has UID/GID 500, Wifey has 501 etc... If "test" gets 501 will that mess up Wifey?]

Any ideas?

At the moment Fedora 7 is just a waste of a good partition for me, and I am dying to get it going properly...

Thanks in advance.

Mark

You could always try to save off what is in /home currently to another FC7 native partition then do the test.

e.g. tar czvf /root/home.tgz /home

You can verfiy the tgz has everything by running "tar tzvf /root/home.tgz" and later can restore it using "tar xzvf /root/home.tgz".

Have you tried logging in failsafe mode as one of your non-root users? If that works then it might help to confirm the issue is in fact the gnome stuff.

Also more simply you could try saving only the .g* files from your home directory then removing those files/subdirectories and login. If it works bringing up the GUI then it would confirm the issue is indeed the gnome stuff.

Finally - do you have any other special mounts such as NFS or Samba? If you've not properly addressed those the quotacheck could be what is hanging you rather than gnome. The failsafe login should experience a lag if this is the case.

Thanks,

I was just about to post anyway because I think I've solved it...

I tried logging is as root (at the graphical login screen) something I never normally do so I didn't think of trying it, and sure enough it worked...

This confirmed to me that it was a problem with my FC6 gnome settings so I tried renaming my .gnome/ .gnome2/ and .gnome2_private/ folders and then logging in again - no joy.

Then I tried renaming .gconf/ and Presto! I'm in!

I've got some tweaking to do now! (Where on earth do you turn on system sounds now?)

Thanks again!

Mark

I just want to add a weird postscript to this tale. (I may make it a separate thread).

Everything does now seem to work - BUT - the problem above (by a process of elimination) seem to be related to sound!

If I turn on the "system sounds" (I know they're a bit naff but I kind of like a little "plink" sound when I open a new window) I cannot log into my user account. The background image loads, some of the gnome panels load, the welcome sound plays and then... nothing. Lock up.

The only remedy is to reboot into FC6 (which uses the same /home partition - and where the system sounds work just fine - so not a hardware problem) and turn off system sounds. I can then log back into F7 just fine.

Is this a bug?

Anyone else have this problem?

Mark