I'm running RHEL 5 and I had the gnome desktop installed initially. I used it while setting it up. In the process of cleaning up I may have removed something so that now I don't get the option to select gnome as my desktop at the login screen. The only option I have is Default System Session and Failsafe Terminal.

I believe gnome-desktop and the other packages are still installed because it shows up as being installed in Red Hat Network, I see the files under /usr/bin and when I run yum install gnome it tells me "nothing to do".

How do I make it so that I get the option for the Gnome Desktop at login?

Just a thought: If you have the file /usr/bin/startgdm, do an init 3, log in as root, and run the startegdm command to see if any error messages are generated.

If that (as is likely) doesn't help, since GNOME is, apparently, installed, remove it and reinstall it.

I appear to be missing startgdm. I'll try the uninstall and reinstall. thanks!

Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but I installed the KDE desktop and used that you install Gnome (it was not check as being installed). Now I have both desktops to play around with.