Help I can't load a desktop manager

dravenloft · 06-21-2006, 01:40 PM

I'm running debian with kernel 2.6.16-2, and whatever the newest x.org in sid is, GDM by preference and tried to use KDM to see if that'd help the problem any.
Here's the problem:
I can just run X from the command line, and get the oh so lovely grey screen with the X shaped cursor and of course can do nothing because I've no window manager or desktop. I can also get GDM and KDM to load. However, if I try to login as any user, root included, I can't. GDM of course lets me know that something was wrong and lets me see .xsession-errors

Code:

/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: Registering your session with wtmp and utmp        
/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: running: /usr/X11R6/bin/sessreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp
 -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/lib/gdm/:0.Xservers" -h "" -l ":0" "draco"           
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...                                   
Failed to start message bus: Failed to read directory "/etc/dbus-1/${prefix}/sha
re/dbus-1/services": No such file or directory                                  
EOF in dbus-launch reading address from bus daemon                              
Xsession: X session started for draco at Wed Jun 21 13:55:50 EDT 2006           
Failed to start message bus: Failed to read directory "/etc/dbus-1/${prefix}/sha
re/dbus-1/services": No such file or directory                                  
EOF in dbus-launch reading address from bus daemon

This happens regardless of selecting for the session to be GNOME, KDE, Fluxbox, fvmw, IceWM, etc.

I really don't know what it means, just that using startx doesn't get me anywhere either. No errors that I could see, it just shows the X server startup and shutdown lines regarding the initialisation and shutdown of the graphics drivers.

What happened? It was working while I ran apt-get dist-upgrade this morning. I logged out of the desktop when it was done and rebooted since it'd updated me to a new kernel. When I get back. Well.... I can't do anything now. Logging in on console still works, it seems the only problem lies somewhere with X.

theYinYeti · 06-22-2006, 06:45 AM

This is new to me. However, luckily, it should just be that dbus is not running. Do you have a service named dbus or something similar (eg: messagebus...)? If so, is it running? Else, do you have available packages named *bus* in your apt repositories?

Yves.

(Sorry if I'm a little vague: I have more experience with Mandriva than I have with Debian)

dravenloft · 06-22-2006, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theYinYeti

This is new to me. However, luckily, it should just be that dbus is not running. Do you have a service named dbus or something similar (eg: messagebus...)? If so, is it running? Else, do you have available packages named *bus* in your apt repositories?

Yves.

(Sorry if I'm a little vague: I have more experience with Mandriva than I have with Debian)

To be honest... I don't know. The dbus I thought was something set up by either x11-common or xserver-xorg. I could be wrong, though I don't recall ever seeing dbus as anything more that a log message.

dravenloft · 06-22-2006, 10:21 AM

Ok. Booted back to Linux, and found that:

Yes dbus is installed and running. I'd gotten it confused with something else. It's what controlls things like hald. So dbus seems alive and well.
I can use a WM/Desktop Env. I just have to go to failsafe mode, and in the terminal type something like startkde. So the Managers and Envrionments work, X works, K/GDM work, just the shifting of control from K/GDM to Mgr/Environ no worky.

Needless to say I am now thoroughly confused and feel that what would solve my problem right now would involve TNT.

Speaking of drastic measures... Would my Lokisoft games run in OpenSolaris? I know that the answer ought to be no, but I've never 100% understood what POSIX was and all that.... and well... I'd rather not assume any *nix system can't do something.

dravenloft · 06-22-2006, 11:13 AM

I found the answer. I... I don't use sid normally. I use more of an etch/sid hybrid. Getting the newest KDE and X from sid, and some of the software that is only available there, but manually doing so because so many things, like udev, break every so often in sid..... I'd forgotten to comment out the sid deb sources when I did dist-upgrade.

I'd apparently installed a broken dbus, which was fixed sometime yesterday or today because after running dist-upgrade again I saw that dbus was among the new packages.... this is when I also noticed that the files were coming from sid/main instead of etch/main.

::weeping::