I've got Debian Sarge, freshly installed on my computer. I used a net install CD and just installed the standard packages for a desktop system and a server. (I want it to have the functionality of a standard desktop, and a dev platform for websites and the like) Anyways, all was going well. I got into Debian, (gnome) and ran the package manager to make some changes.

Here's the stupid thing I did: while running gnome, I told the package manage to un-install gnome. KDE was already in there, and I added a few extra things in as well. After that went through I rebooted the computer so it would load up KDE... or not. The computer boots, and I'm promoted with a text login. I can type "startx" and get KDE, that all works just fine - but how do I get it to start x automatically when I boot up, and use the graphical login again?

I'm fairly new to this side of debian, I've a shared hosting account with Dreamhost, that gives me shell access to their debian servers, so I'm basically familiar with the command line, but I don't know all that much. Thanks for your help, and sorry if I've rambled too much!

Thanks

use your favorite text editor to edit the inittab file int the /etc directory. edit as follows: change the 3 to a 5 in this line:

id:3:initdefault:

so it looks like this:

id:5:initdefault:

that should do it.

I tried that, found the line, changed it from 2: to 5: but it still doesn't start. That is perhaps icewm? I tried to catch any error messages on boot, and I think I saw some icewm directories go by - and if that's the case it also wouldn't work cause I don't have icewm installed.

Thanks for the quick reply though! It's much apprechated.

gee that's the only thing I can think of. There is a way to view those messages that come up when you boot your system - but I don't know what it is. All those messages are in a log file somewhere - dig around and you can find it.

When I was wanting KDE to be my display manager I: But I am not sure if you are wanting KDM or GDM to be your display manager or if either are installed for you at the moment. Did you remove GDM? You can use the package manager to achive the same thing.

hmm.. Like I said, I've got KDE installed and working - I can launch it from the terminal after my text login, by using the command startx. So it's there, and in some way being chosen as the default x enviroment. But what I want is to get back to KDE starting automatically, instead of my getting a shell prompt.

Anyways, I'll dig for thoes logs, see if that turns up anythng...

Thanks!

Try xwmconfig and choose kde from the list - maybe that'll work.

I tried xwmconfig and it says command not found (true for my regular user as well as root).

I've also noticed that my screens arn't working properly, I think that's what their called - ctrl-alt-F# Before I messed things up all the start up sutff took place on screen 1 (duah!) and then X would load on 7. Now x is loaded on 2, and I can't get to any of the other screens.

Perhaps it would be best for me to re-install and just make the appropiate package selections from the beginning? As I said before, I'd rather not re-install, but maybe I messed it up really good?

thanks again.

hmmm... yea.. it seems when you removed Gnome it also removed gdm...

gdm comes along with debian (not kdm from what i've seen)

try reinstalling that on there and see if it'll automatically pull that back up... who knows... =\

GDM is what I needed. Sorry jkmb111, I wasn't thinking when I read your post. I read it ans said, "no, I don't want to use gnome, I want KDE"

Apparently I pulled that out too when I was un-install gnome, and putting it back in has put my graphical log in back in order.

However I still can't switch screens properly...

Thanks for all your help! Sorry I was being stupid before.

Right, I fixed the screen thing by changing the inittab value back to 2 as it origionaly was. Now all is well with the world. you guys are great! thanks again.