Hello,

I just installed the latest version of Debian Sarge. Everything seems to have gone well, I choose the desktop option and the installer put KDE and Gnome on the machine. But whenever I try to logoff from either KDE or Gnome, the return to GDM (the Gnome login manager) goes to a blank screen that never changes.

I tried Cntrl-Alt-Backspace and it brought up the terminal for a second and then tried to restart GDM and gave me the blank screen again. I tried to logon to a terminal session but that doesn’t work either.

I believe X windows is not configured properly because I see it for a second before the GDM starts up (from a cold boot). The colors in xterm seem to be messed up. But I cannot figure out how to change anything if I can’t get to a terminal session. KDE and Gnome themselves start up (from a cold boot), can I use a root terminal there to dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86? It wouldn’t seem possible since xterm is already running.

Is there anyway to force it to start a terminal session instead of a GUI session?

Thank you in advance
Philip

You should be able to get to a terminal by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1 while in the GUI. Then login as root and issue:

Kill the process number and then proceed.