IceWm has taken over FC4
 

Hi all; I have installed (via RPM) a somewhat old version of IceWM and it is indeed working.

However, the issue I'm having is that whenever I log out of an IceWm session and choose GNOME or KDE from the sessions menu (both were installed with FC4) I get the user name and password prompt, but it logs me right back in to IceWM desktop.

I've even tried (in a command line as both root and user) to run the command 'switchdesk kde' and 'switchdesk gnome' and both of them returned some textual information in the CLI, but nothing else happened.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy IceWM, but I still want to be able to choose among my other desktop sessions as well. I am going to try to look at my xsessions file, but i'm not sure this will do what i'm expecting....

Any help would be appreciated- thanks.

Adam

You installed by rpm remove it by rpm; rpm -e foo

FYI: IceWM rpm packages built for FC4 can be found here;

http://dries.ulyssis.org/rpm/packages/icewm/info.html

try something like "startkdm" or "startgdm" at the command prompt - those should take you to the screens you're looking for.

You might want to boot into runlevel 3 instead of 5 then try using switchdesk and startx for Gnome and or KDE. Delete the hidden .Xclients[-default] files first, they should get re-created each time you use switchdesk.

[QUOTE=Lenard]You installed by rpm remove it by rpm; rpm -e foo


Thanks, I was able to remove the older icewm, and found the newer fc4 package at the URL you listed.

Still having the same issue. Lenard, I'm not sure how to boot into run level 3 instead of runlevel 5.

[QUOTE=adamt222]you could try hitting Ctrl+Alt+F1 and that will take you to a terminal. then, login as root and type this: that will get you to runlevel 3.

Icewm takeover FC4 - issue solved/with workaround
 

Hi all- just want to say thanks for all the advice you've given me at this forum.

I tried an alternate approach to the problem, and for now it seems to be working, so I'm going to consider the matter closed. Here's what I did: (hopefully this will be helpful to other Linux users, or if not, it's not)

I did some investigating as to 'which file' has the exec icewm-session line and where
it needs to be either active or commented-out [made inactive]. The file (in my distro) is /home/yourUserName/.bash_profile

Commenting-out the line "exec icewm-session", disables icewm from running and taking over the OS, thus allowing me to choose KDE or GNOME after I log out of an IceWM session.

If I take the '#' character away from the line exec icewm-session, it logs/boots me right into IceWM session. So, editing .bash_profile manually each time would (obviously) get tired very quickly, so I wrote a python script (2 of them, just for sake of speed) that will re-write (add or remove commenting) the file '.bash_profile' in my home directory.

I created 2 files (enable_icewm, and disable_icewm) in python and placed them in /usr/bin. From within a menu choice in IceWM (/home/yourUserName/.icewm/menu) I call to the disable_icewm python script. And then, I log out of IceWM and I can choose KDE or GNOME, as needed.

Once in KDE, if I run the python script 'enable_icewm' it once again overwrites '.bash_profile' so that the commenting is removed, and when i log out of KDE, i can log in to Icewm.

Again I thank you for your responses- Adam