hello all,
Having a problem that is probably an easy fix, xcept for this noob- running slackware 9.1 and just finished installing. Install went great. Logged in fine, but Xwindows will not start- ran xf86config and "dumbed it down" a little, and got it set so that my HW shouldn't be a problem( ran RH on this box a while back w/o issue). It quits when it tries to run the last line of xinitrc which is exec gnome-session. I had chosen Gnome during setup, and startx looks to be executing fine until that point. Looked in xfree86.0.log, and nothing looks out of the ordinary- that is to say, no glaring "ERROR"s were found.

Any thoughts?

so xfree86.0.log doesn't include any lines that start with (WW) or (EE) ?

hm..you could try to see if this helps: first, as root, do

updatedb

to make sure your search database is up-to-date. after it's finished (may take a while), run

locate gnome-session | more

and when you get something, scroll down if needed, and see where the executable is (something like /usr/bin/gnome-session or where ever it's installed). when you get the path, edit the .xinitrc file and replace the line

exec gnome-session

with

exec /path/to/your/gnome-session

this handles the problem that might occur if gnome-session isn't in your PATH; that is, your system can't automatically find it simply by it's name. now save .xinitrc and retry startx...

There are two(2) WW error messages,actually.

One initially, that reads (WW) Open APM Failed(/dev/apm_bios) (no such device)

and another that is just saying that it is ignoring extraneous synch rates

I am running the updatedb, and will try your path suggestions when it is complete

Well,

The good news is that this is the best way to learn. The bad news is that the updatedb with subsequent LOCATE did not turn up a gnome-session file. I ran pkgtool and re-selected GNOME as the preferred desktop; I also tried selecting KDE to see what happened. That failed too. I think that I either I am missing something obvious, or there might be a hardware issue.

no, if you have installed Gnome desktop, you really should have the gnome-session file...perhaps you should try to reinstall Gnome (if it's possible)?

try to locate the other gnome files too, and see what you have:

locate gnome | less

you should get a lot of output..but scroll down and look. if you see /something/bin/ -directory that has gnome's files, go there and see what you got. gnome-session should reside in the same place than gnome-panel, gnome-about, gnome-help and some other gnome-something binaries..

The only gnome-sessions that I have are in /etc/gconf.xml.defaults/apps and etc/gconf.xml.defaults/schemas/apps. Earlier, I tried changing the path to the 1st one above, and got a File/Directory Not Found Error. I will try it again, though, as I might have screwed something up. Seems like an odd place for it to end up, though..

No good on either of those, though I did find out that I was editing the wrong xinitrc file. Found the one that xf86config was calling, and changed that. No luck. I did notice, however, that when I change the path, I get a File/Directory not found error, whereas when it is left as gnome-session, I just get 'not found'.....though I don't think that that is really anything but a different message depending on whether you specify an explicit path versus an iplicit path....

all set now, thx b0uncer- turned out to be a corrupted build. How, I am not sure. Noticed other issues, and rebuilt. Installed with individual package acknowledgement, and it went fine. Posting this reply on it now.


thx

hi,

Please try the following command and then run X windows
TERM=xterm