Installing and Running Gnome desktop on Minimal installation of CentOS 6.5 i386

OtagoHarbour · 03-24-2014, 08:18 PM

I have just installed CentOS 6.5 minimal. The reason I installed the minimal version is that the full version had ISOs of over 3GB each and my CD-RWs can only told about 750 MB.

I would like a graphical desktop. I tried

Code:

sudo yum update
sudo yum groupinstall basic-desktop desktop-platform x11 fonts

and they both ran without any errors. However, when I tried to run the desktop using

Code:

sudo gdm

and it just hung in the command line. When I tried

Code:

gdm

I got

Code:

** (gdm-binary:2164): WARNING **: Failed to acquire org.gnome.DisplayManager: Connection "1.37" is not allowed to own the service "org.gnome.DisplayManager" due to security policies in the configuration file

 ** (gdm-binary:2164): WARNING **: Could not acquire name; bailing out

When I tried

Code:

sudo yum -y groupinstall "Desktop" "Desktop Platform" "X Window System" "Fonts"

I got

Code:

"No packages in any requested group available to install or update

Code:

sudo gdm

still hangs

Code:

yum grouplist

includes "Desktop" and "Desktop Platform" in the output. I tried

Code:

sudo gdm --version

and got

Code:

GDM 2.30.4

so Gnome is obviously installed. I was able to run Gnome on this machine with Ubuntu 11.4 so I so not think it is a problem with the hardware.

kirukan · 03-24-2014, 10:30 PM

Try #startx instead..

chrism01 · 03-25-2014, 04:45 AM

Of course you have just used DVDs instead of CDs ...

As above

Code:

startx

should start the GUI if you've installed the SW. At the least it will tell you what's missing (sort of ...)

OtagoHarbour · 03-28-2014, 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kirukan

Try #startx instead..

Sorry about the delay getting back. For some reason #startx gave me the graphical login but the cursor froze. I have installed the full version of CentOS 6.5 and it works great!

Thanks,
OH

OtagoHarbour · 03-28-2014, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrism01

Of course you have just used DVDs instead of CDs ...

As above

Code:

startx

should start the GUI if you've installed the SW. At the least it will tell you what's missing (sort of ...)

Thank you for your reply. I had installed the minimal version since I did not realize that a DVD could hold the 3.5 GB file ISOs for the full version install. I have installed the full version and it works great so I have decided not to use the minimal version. Sorry about asking a question about something I subsequently decided against using.

chrism01 · 04-03-2014, 05:31 AM

No worries

Actually my install is the 'minimal desktop' install option (from Full DVD).
I prefer to start from there and yum install more pkgs as and when needed.