Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Distribution: RedHat 8.0, 7.1 and Enterprise WS 3,4
Posts: 94
Rep:
Corrupted Gnome?
Hi,
I'm running redhat 8, kernel 2.4.20-28.8smp, and just recently I found that I was unable to log in via the GUI. What would happen is I would enter my username and password, then hit return. Then the Linux Redhat box would show up in the middle of the screen, and that's it. Instead of the little icons appearing under the words "Red Hat' nothing would happen and the machine would just sit there until I either killed the login processes started by me or rebooted the machine. I could ssh to the machine with no problems, and if I killed the GUI log in, I could log in text mode, also with no problems. Eventually I tried switching to a different season, I believe from Gnome to KDE, and I was able to log in just fine. This leads me to believe that some of my Gnome files are corrupted. I believe that if I delete
~/.gnome
I can reset my Gnome preferences. Here's my question (sorry for all the background). This problem didn't just occur to me, it occured to multiple users. All the users log in via a LDAP server, but as I mention it was not an authentication problem, but something with the Gnome session GUI. Is it possible that multiple ~/.gnome directories were corrupted at the same time? Or is there a global Gnome preference directory that might have gotten corrupted and caused this problem? Thanks so much for all you help.
"Is it possible that multiple ~/.gnome directories were corrupted at the same time?"
Extremely unlikely.
"Or is there a global Gnome preference directory that might have gotten corrupted and caused this problem?"
The problem is not in Gnome per se. It is in gdm which is the Gnome version of the GUI login manager. I would start by looking in these files for something suspicious:
Distribution: RedHat 8.0, 7.1 and Enterprise WS 3,4
Posts: 94
Original Poster
Rep:
Thanks for your reply. I've checked in /etc/X11/gdm and /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf and I've compared them both to the same files on a different machine. I didn't see any differences, so I don't think there was anything suspicious. However, I am certainly no expert so it's easily possible for something to be suspicious and I would miss it. I was thinking that I could replace the /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf file with one from a working machine and see if that works, but I'm open to any suggestions as to what might have caused the problem, or a better way to go about fixing it. Thanks so much.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.