LinuxQuestions.org - X issues with CentOS 6

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X issues with CentOS 6

I have an old Proliant DL380 G4, dual 3.6 GHz Xeons, 6GB RAM. I installed CentOS 6.2 and added X during the install. When I startx, I get kind of a blue screen with three little icons. No menus or anything. No way to exit. Ctrl-Alt-Backspace doesn't work. Sometimes I can Ctrl-Alt-Fx to another console and kill all X processes to end it, but sometimes that strange desktop just freezes solid and I have to pull the power.

1) How can I find out what WM it's actually using?

2) How can I specify which WM to use?

3) How can I get it to exit without a hard reboot so I can look in the logs to see why it's acting weird?

4) Is there an X configuration utility I can run from the command line? There used to be one years and years ago, and it was very useful to find a working X config!

Hi,

CentOS 5& 6 use Gnome2 by default. (window managers )
2. I'm sorry I don't know / don't use it -> maybe something to read here and probably better here
have you installed all necessary packages, another link
3. CTRL+ALT+F1...F4 -> console, then search for processes (ps aux) to kill (kill -9 ...)
4. probably "system-config-display"

good luck

You should be able to inspect /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients. It sources /etc/sysconfig/desktop to find out what desktop to use, but uses a couple of different fallbacks if the preferred/specified one doesn't work out.

--- rod.

Use "yum grouplist" and see if you've got Desktop, Desktop platform, and General putpose desktop installed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMcCann (Post 4697046)

Use "yum grouplist" and see if you've got Desktop, Desktop platform, and General putpose desktop installed.

I was missing one of the three, so I installed it. Now I get menus, but no mouse pointer, and no key combination seems to do anything.

Code:

[me@localhost ~]$ yum grouplist

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, refresh-packagekit, security

Setting up Group Process

Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile

 * base: mirror.anl.gov

 * extras: centos.mirror.nac.net

 * updates: centos.aol.com

Installed Groups:

  Additional Development

  Base

  Client management tools

  Console internet tools

  Debugging Tools

  Desktop

  Desktop Platform

  Dial-up Networking Support

  E-mail server

  Fonts

  General Purpose Desktop

  Graphical Administration Tools

  Hardware monitoring utilities

  Java Platform

  Large Systems Performance

  Legacy UNIX compatibility

  Legacy X Window System compatibility

  Messaging Client Support

  NFS file server

  Network Infrastructure Server

  Network file system client

  Networking Tools

  Performance Tools

  Perl Support

  Scientific support

  Server Platform

  Systems Management Messaging Server support

  Virtualization

  Virtualization Client

  Virtualization Platform

  Web Server

  X Window System

  iSCSI Storage Client

Quote:

Originally Posted by lithos (Post 4695455)

4. probably "system-config-display"

Looks like that's been deprecated and replaced with "xrandr". A quick initial peek at it doesn't look like it will run a neat config tool, though :(

So, I reinstalled and all is well now. Previously, I'd used the Virtualization role and added X. This time, I chose the Desktop role and added Virtualization. C'est la vie...

Thank you for posting back the solution, great to see you got it working.

Can you mark the thread as solved then ? (you can look at my signature if you need how to do it)

Best regards