X issues with CentOS 6

jnojr · 06-04-2012, 04:02 PM

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!

lithos · 06-04-2012, 04:30 PM

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

theNbomr · 06-04-2012, 08:34 PM

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.

DavidMcCann · 06-06-2012, 01:34 PM

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

jnojr · 06-06-2012, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMcCann

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

jnojr · 06-06-2012, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lithos

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

jnojr · 06-06-2012, 07:03 PM

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...

lithos · 06-07-2012, 03:17 AM

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