Hey, I really messed up my Fedora installation. It started when I wanted to install GTK+, and it complained about XFree86-libs not being installed (which it was, but maybe it was corrupted in some way..). So I thought I'd just reinstall XFree86-libs... I ran yum remove and then yum install, but it didn't work. Instead, basically all icons on the desktop disappeared and no programs worked.. I've managed to install XFree86 and gdm now, but it's still not enough. When I boot up and try to log in it says that my windows manager, "Fvwm2" isn't found on my system. Any idea on what to do next? Is it possible to fix this, or should I just reinstall?

This is the exact error message I get when I try to log in:
"Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds. If you have not logged out yourself, this could mean that there is some installtion problem or that you may be out of diskspace. Try logging in with one of the failsafe sessions to see fi you can fix this problem."

And when I view the details (could be some typos in here):
"/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/default: Registering your session with wtmp and utmp
/etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/default:: running: /usr/bin/X11/sessreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/gdm/:0.Xservers" -h "" -l ":0" "root"
Warning: You selected Fvwm2 as your window manager, but your installation
does not appear to be functional. The executable /usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2 was
not found on your system.
RESUMING with TWM...
/usr/X11R6/bin/RunWM: line 105: xterm: command not found"

Any help is much appreciated.
/F

"Hey, I really messed up my Fedora installation. It started when I wanted to install GTK+, and it complained about XFree86-libs not being installed (which it was, but maybe it was corrupted in some way..). So I thought I'd just reinstall XFree86-libs... I ran yum remove and then yum install, but it didn't work. Instead, basically all icons on the desktop disappeared and no programs worked.. I've managed to install XFree86 and gdm now, but it's still not enough. When I boot up and try to log in it says that my windows manager, "Fvwm2" isn't found on my system. Any idea on what to do next? Is it possible to fix this, or should I just reinstall?"

You can use command line rpm to install fvwm2 from your install CD. Then use rpm to install the next thing that is missing and so on until you get everything reinstalled.

Or you can back up /home and any other personal data that you have and reinstall.

I don't know for sure which method is less work. Use this command:
rpm -qa | sort > /root/packages.txt
to create a library containing every package name. Then use:
less /root/packages.txt
to look over your packages and see if you can tell how much you are missing. Are you missing KDE or GNOME?

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Thanks for the help. I've created and looked through the list of packages and to me it seems like I have GNOME installed (unsure of exactly which packages are needed) as I have these packages:
gdm-2.4.4.5-1.2
libgnome-2.4.0-1
libgnomeui-2.4.0.1-1
And some more that I suspect are also part of GNOME..

I searched the three cds but couldn't find the fvwm2 package, so I went to http://www.fvwm.org/ and got the latest stable version rpm (2.4.17-1.i386.rpm). It seems that it hasn't been updated in a while, so I'm not sure if this is the same that Fedora uses.
Also, when I run:
rpm -i --test fwm-2.4.17-1.i386.rpm
I get:
error: Failed dependencies:
libgdk-1.2.so.0 is needed by fvwm-2.4.17-1
libgdk_imlib.so.1 is needed by fvwm-2.4.17-1
libgtk-1.2.so.0 is needed by fvwm-2.4.17-1
libstroke.so.0 is needed by fvwm-2.4.17-1

When I search for these packages with yum, it doesn't find them. Should I find and install these and the downloaded fvwm package? Any other ideas?

"When I search for these packages with yum, it doesn't find them. Should I find and install these and the downloaded fvwm package?"

Yes. You are on the right track.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites