xdm fails to start X
Hi,
I'm using xfce, and I'm trying to get xdm to do the login, but upon entering a valid username and password it just goes back to the login screen. The error in /var/log/xdm.log: Code:
xdm info (pid 1404): sourcing /usr/lib/X11/xdm/GiveConsole ps -elf | grep xdm Code:
4 S root 1392 1 0 80 0 - 1131 ? 15:42 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon Code:
1398 Code:
/usr/bin/startxfce4: Starting X server Code:
4 S root 1398 1392 0 80 0 - 6344 ? 15:42 tty7 00:00:00 /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/lib/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-2EhFVl /usr/lib/X11/xdm/xdm-config Code:
DisplayManager.authDir: /var/lib/xdm Code:
:0 local /usr/bin/X :0 ~/.xinitrc Code:
exec xfce4-session |
Ok. Finally managed to get it to work, and since someone else might run into the problem (and I'm a nice guy), I'll post the solution.
There were actually 2 problems, and both of them were related to the file ~/.xsession. Apparently startx uses ~/.xinitrc, but xdm requires the .xsession one. In my case the .xsession-file didn't exist - and I didn't get any meaningful error messages because I didn't know where to look for them (they're in ~/.xsession-errors). When I did figure out it was relevant I was still sent on a wild goose chase for a while, because there apparently is a bug in one of the scripts of xdm. Specifically the script /usr/lib/X11/xdm/Xsession, will, if the ~/.xsession file does not exist try to run /usr/bin/xsm. The problem here is that xsm is long since deprecated, and does not exist. To fix this, replace the line Code:
exec /usr/bin/xsm Code:
exec /bin/sh /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc |
Thanks for posting your solution. I've just had a Gentoo machine fail to log in from XDM after an update, with very similar symptoms (and works with startx) except I see nothing at all in ~/.xsession-errors. I'll have a look see if your fix works for me.
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Actually my problem was something entirely different - after the upgrade it seems no longer allowable to not have consolekit running. So I started consolekit and it logs in fine from XDM
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not surprising. xdm has always been pretty buggy
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