I just switched from KDE to Gnome last week and sometimes (Only sometimes) the Mounting Local File Systems hangs forever upon bootup.

It has not done it before on KDE. Its been happening 3 times already. Then I always have to reboot and it all seems OK after.

I never even changed my partition files. But when I reboot, its OK. Its only on the first start up.

This is nothing to do with KDE or Gnome; the local filesystem is mounted way before X windows starts up.

You may find more information in the /var/log/messages file after it hangs.

Also, how do you know it's hanging forever? Could it be that the filesystem isn't unmounting properly so it's going through a full fsck when you start up (which will normally take a few minutes)?

Yup I agree with rjlee.

However the fsck must complete before the boot continues, so it's unlikely that it is running in the background.

What "local" file systems does it seem to be mounting?

Now since Im back on the KDE, it does not hang anymore. It only seems do it in GNOME (upon bootup).

As we've just said, this conclusion is impossible. Gnome does not run upon bootup, so it can't be hanging.

The most likely explanation I can think of without any further information is that some process in Gnome is not closing down properly when you shutdown (possibly indicating a kernel-level problem), and so your filesystem isn't being cleanly unmounted. Thus, it's going through a full fsck at each boot. But I don't see why the problem should clear after a hard reboot.

Try booting with the command-line option: and select the first option for your video mode; this may give you more information as to what's happening. Also, really do check your log-files. This could be indicative of a worse problem.

Gnome itself loads a bunch of "helper" apps that are required.

It's quite possible that there is a problem with one of these causing it to fail to load.

You may want to UNINSTALL any GNOME rpm's.

e.g.

(This is a cute trick btw...)

rpm -e 'rpm -qa | grep gnome'

Which will uninstall any and ALL vestiges of gnome with one command.

Then you can re-install gnome with

urpmi gnome