Gnome 2.4 start screen, then nothing

bkwrm790 · Last edited by bkwrm790 on Mon Dec 29, 2003 1:55 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hi all,

I'm new here, so please forgive me if i don't give all the information needed. I just recently installed Gentoo on my system at home. I started from a stage 3 (i know, i do intend to try from stage 1 eventually), and got the system up and running. Had some problems with X, so I emerged X with drm because I have an ATI-9800 pro card, and i can get tvm to work, with my usb mouse and regular keyboard.

I tried to install Gnome 2.2 (latest one on my install cd, wanted to be fast) and had problems with getting just the splash screen. I did a rough uninstall (not too familiar with portage yet), and upgraded to Gnome 2.4 using a full build from scratch. It still hangs, all i get is the startup screen (is this the "splash" screen, just Gnome 2.4 logo?), a little bit of disk activity, and then it dies. It does nothing else, gnome does not startup. I found the previous posts about a similar problem, and have tried deleting the '.gnome2' directory and clearing out the '/tmp' directory, and that still doesnt work. There are no errors reported in the '.gnomerc-errors' file. I've waited 30 minutes, 60 minutes and still nothing happens.

There is no difference whether i try to run this as root or a regular user. I've considered starting from scratch all over again (format drives, reinstall kernel, etc) but am wondering if i should just try a proper uninstall using portage first (saw directions for that somewhere on the site) and build gnome again. Any other suggestions would also be appreciated.

Contents of '.gnomerc-errors':

SESSION_MANAGER=local/grimlock1:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1960

Thanks,
_________________
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

-Bkwrm790

bkwrm790 · Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 10:55 pm Post subject: extra info

I forgot to mention i'm using the 2.4.20 kernel.
_________________
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

-Bkwrm790

DiS-K · Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 11:35 pm Post subject:

Hmm, annoying. I've had similar problems in the past and I find it hard to debug. Have you tried starting X from a console with startx as opposed to using gdm? Something might show up on the console that could give a clue to the problem.

Otherwise, start X with twm or just an xterm and manually run gnome-session from there and see what happens.

bkwrm790 · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 12:29 am Post subject: tried that, didnt work

ok, i had tried starting gnome using every alternative i knew (gdm, startx), but not from within X itself in an xterm. Tried that using 'gnome-session', and got the same thing. Gnome just sits there. I get the splash screen, and nothing else. I should also mention that it crashes the whole computer, i can't even switch terminals or kill the xserver once the disk activity stops.

If i act quickly enough, i can kill the xserver, and i do get a warning, not sure if it helps:

(WW) RADEON: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:1:0:1) found Symbol drmGetClient from module /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.o is unresolved!

And then of course the error that i killed the X server.

I'm open to any more ideas
_________________
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

-Bkwrm790

bkwrm790 · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 12:47 am Post subject: more info

Some more information. Because Gnome wasn't working, i decided to try KDE. It is still installing, but i noticed some odd error messages during the install of some of the software. I'm getting a message that:

writing local directory /root/.kde/configure...... permission denied.

I am doing the install as root, so in theory i don't see why there should be a problem with this. I'm wondering if files that Gnome needed in the user directory did not get written during the install as well, and if this is my problem. Could anyone give me a directory listing of all the Gnome & or KDE related directories and files that should be present after install just so i can compare to what i have?? And possibly a reason why i'm getting the error message above?

Thank you very much.
_________________
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

-Bkwrm790

bkwrm790 · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2004 9:53 pm Post subject: X install part of problem

I figured out from X constantly freezing that this was my real problem, not Gnome. After going through a complete format of my linux partition and re-installation, i have recompiled my kernel with needed options for Radeon9800 pro, emerged XFree, emerged ati-drivers, configured using fglrxconfig, and now have an X environment that does not crash. Thanks to all the posts regarding getting Radeon graphics cards to work, they are a life saver. Now I am re-installing Gnome, hopefully it will work fine.
_________________
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

-Bkwrm790