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Old 04-23-2005, 03:23 PM   #1
chexmix
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booting into console or GUI - Solaris 10


Hi, All -

A friend at worked burned 4 CDs of Solaris for me to install/play with. I finally got it to lay down and play nice on my IBM R31 ThinkPad, but it seems ... flaky, somehow.

Here's what's happening. The system boots into console mode, which is no problem since that's how my fave Linux distro, Slackware, boots and I've learned to like that. Howsomever, then I had some difficulty finding the right command to start CDE. I'm not sure I've found it yet ... & when I start up the GUI logon it flickers back and forth between X and console, X and console, etc ...

... so I went looking for a way to make the system boot directly into the GUI, thinking, Hell, I can always open a console WINDOW, right? I 1) found the black-on-white of the Solaris console kinda irritating, sort of "different for different's sake" from my Linux and FreeBSD installations, and 2) got weary of all the futzing and flashing and so forth.

... and the command I found refs to online, /etc/rc2.d/S99dtlogin -e, just _doesn't do anything_. I can enable, disable and so on back and forth, but nothing changes.

So I'm wondering if someone cd help me with:

1) what is the A-1 command to boot up CDE from console?
2) how do I change the color scheme of the Solaris console, if at all
3) how do I get the system to boot directly into GUI, should I decide to go that route.

... these are prob'ly all in the voluminous Sun docs. :|

I'm eager to explore this environment, but I'd like it to be slightly less uglyclunky.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Regards,

Glenn
 
Old 04-23-2005, 05:35 PM   #2
Gnute
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CDE? Why in God's name do you want to use CDE?
I use JDE. It's awesome.
Anyway... (Oh God, the horror with that laptop.. Solaris 9 gave me a kernel panic :O)

I think what you want to try is gdm from the command-line after you login..
If it doesn't work, type sys-unconfig and restart.. it'll take you back to the installation stage where you'd be setting up your network and X...
i810 should work with Xsun (READ: Not Xorg... I haven't tried Xorg) but if it doesn't, you always have VESA. (I THINK that's there, isn't it? Yes, it should be..)

Anyway, good luck with it.

Last edited by Gnute; 04-23-2005 at 05:37 PM.
 
Old 04-24-2005, 03:19 AM   #3
jlliagre
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I think Gnute mean JDS (sun's gnome), not JDE.
Also, no need to sys-unconfig, your laptop graphic seems to be wrongly configured and kdmconfig is the command to fix that.

About the console colors, I guess the can be changed easily with "tput rev" or escape control commands, but I can't confirm right now.
 
Old 04-24-2005, 03:26 PM   #4
Gnute
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JDS, JDE, whatever. :P
I mistook Java Desktop System for Java Desktop Environment; sue me.
 
Old 04-29-2005, 04:37 PM   #5
chexmix
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Gnute/jlliagre: thanks so much for the tips.

I ran kdmconfig and it produced a reasonable display, but I am still unclear on how to get to the CDE login screen 'by default' upon boot-up or efficiently from the command line.

/etc/rc2.d/S99dtlogin appears to have disappeared (??). When I type 'gdm' as a regular user the system tells me that only root 'wants' to run gdm. So I su over to root, run gdm ... and get the JDS login screen. When I choose CDE from here, I get the CDE splash screen and an hourglass. It hangs for a while and then spits me back to the JDS log on. Weird, weird.

Any further hints will be hungrily chewed. =]

-gb
 
Old 04-30-2005, 01:06 AM   #6
jlliagre
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Quote:
/etc/rc2.d/S99dtlogin appears to have disappeared (??).
I think it should be there, either try "dtconfig -e" to restore it, or better, use smf to enable gdm:

svcadm enable gdm2-login
 
Old 04-30-2005, 03:24 PM   #7
chexmix
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OK ...

I'm making some sporadic headway, but I'm searching for consistency and so far not seeing it. It may be there, but Solaris has so far been a bit ... hmm.

'dtconfig -e' worked fine once I located dtconfig. I guess some $PATH configuration is in order. svcadm seemed to run fine, too ... but I am still presented with console login. I've been futzing with running gdm from the command line, I've located gdm-stop and gdm-restart ... but I keep seeming to wind up with multiple instances of gdm-bina.

Oh, here's something interesting: when I log in and do a ps -u root, I see that gdm _is already running_. But I'm in console ... I have been seeing one error message when I boot up, let's see if I can catch it:

Loading smf(5) service descriptions: 1/1
svccfg import warnings. See /var/svc/log/system-manifest-import:default.log

... so I go to that log and take a look, and see a lot of this at the end:

Method "start" exited with status 0 ]
Stopping because service disabled. ]
Executing stop method (null) ]

... which doesn't make much sense to me.

Sorry, I'm flailing. I'm now checking out commands like svccfg and so on. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that a lot of manpages seem to be MIA ...

Puzzled but determined,

Glenn

PS thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it. I will keep STFW for answers.
 
Old 04-30-2005, 05:16 PM   #8
chexmix
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Hmmm ...

OK, now I have the Desktop Login screen coming right up (just for kicks I went through a sys-unconfig), but have run into some further problems ... each step with this monster seems to be a trial.

The first problem with logging into a desktop was that I hadn't created a /home/username directory when I created my plain user account. Duh. Anyway, I tried issuing 'mkdir' commands to create this dir but found that they wouldn't work (I got "Operation not applicable") ... I SFTW until I found that I needed to remove the entry for /home in the /etc/auto_master file. Umm, okay. Heh.

(This is the point at which I ask whether there is a good intro book for this OS ... obviously I have no idea re: some very important commands and config defaults, etc)

Anyhoo, I got that directory made, and now what's happening is that I boot up to the Desktop Login screen, punch in username and password ... I eventually see the CDE splash screen and an hourglass which hangs and hangs ... until the display goes black, bottoms out in console for a second and then comes back to the Desktop Login screen. That's with CDE. If I choose the JDS, I get some warnings/errors, then it dies. I'll investigate THAT later ... if I can get ONE desktop working dependably I will be oh-so-happy.

Continuing to search for hints, etc. When I first installed Solaris 10 I know I successfully got to a CDE desktop at one point. Now I seem to have lost that ability.

I refuse to let this OS kick me.

-G
 
Old 05-01-2005, 03:11 AM   #9
jlliagre
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Keep in mind dtlogin and gdm are providing the same kind of service, and be conflicting on your system if enabled at the same time. Disable one to have a consistent system.

CDE and JDS are supposed to work flawlessly after installation, and generally do. Problems are usually due to changes made to the system later by the user or the administrator, so any configuration change you made can be their root cause.

Graphic environment login failing may be due to some issue with you .profile or .bash<something> issue, try disabling them by renaming to sth else, or better, create a new user account with an empty home directory and try login with it.

See also error logs for hints, e.g. CDE logs them in /var/dt/Xerrors.

If you have a network access to your box, you can also use truss or dtrace to see what gdm or dtlogin are doing, and where do they fail.

Here is one example:
Code:
truss -dDaef -rall -wall -tall -vall `pgrep (gdm|dt)` 2>&1 | tee /tmp/truss.out
 
Old 05-06-2005, 08:35 PM   #10
chexmix
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problem SOLVED, or at least fixed, for now

OK, I have now got this thing working. I'm not sure what it was that did the trick, but X starts up soon after the console login appears, which is good as far as I'm concerned b/c while I love love love the console/CLI, I find the black on white scheme revolting (another thing to work on). I know that's silly, but oh well.

It felt like (sorry to be so vague, I am summarizing the past few days) I had to muck about with creating a user account _just right_ before X would come up correctly ...

Anyhoo, I enabled dtconfig, and now everything is fine. Except ...

JDS works swell with 24 bit color depth but CDE seems not to like it at all -- at least the last time I tried to pull up CDE with the color set at that depth, it just hung there. Ah well. JDS is nicer anyway.

I'd like to thank the members of this forum and especially jlliagre for all the help. And of course, as always, Googling a lot helped.

Interesting system. I look forward to exploring it.
 
Old 05-07-2005, 09:45 AM   #11
jlliagre
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Quote:
I find the black on white scheme revolting (another thing to work on).
SunOS console has been black on white since more than 22 years now, and as far as I know, nobody has ever complained about it. I'm puzzled by the fact you feel it as an issue ...
Not hard to fix though, I guess you will be able to add this option yourself when OpenSolaris is available.

Quote:
JDS works swell with 24 bit color depth but CDE seems not to like it at all -- at least the last time I tried to pull up CDE with the color set at that depth, it just hung there.
CDE has no problem with 24 bits, you can enable tracing by commenting out the line setting dtstart_sessionlogfile in the user's home directory .dtprofile.
Then, try to log in under CDE and look at the log files in .dt/startlog, sessionlog, errorlogs/* ...
 
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Old 06-07-2013, 10:25 AM   #12
majenkins
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Thumbs up Thanks

I realize this is a very old thread but it helped me find my issue. I had searched for how to make a Sun V480 server that I switched from RSC console to screen/keyboard put some GUI on the screen, CDE, JDS, GNOME, FRED, something. Finally found the cde-login service was disabled thanks to hints in here.

Again thanks for the help. Documentation update on the way.
 
Old 06-07-2013, 02:26 PM   #13
jlliagre
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Welcome to LQ and thanks for sharing !
 
  


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