I'm trying to set up a new CentOS 4.2 desktop, and gdm refuses to start. It blanks the screen, displays the swirling blue circle mouse cursor that appears to be an hourglass equivalent, then drops back to the console window. It repeats this several times then displays the following error: The display server has been shut down about 6 times in the last 90 seconds, it is likely that something bad is going on. I will wait for 2 minutes before trying again on display :0. xdm works, and I can access X Windows by running startx. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot? It's a fresh install with a few site-specific customizations, but I don't think that I've done anything that would intefere with gdm. It is a relatively minimal install, so it's possible that I'm missing some needed package. Thanks. Josh Kelley
On 1/16/06, Josh Kelley <joshkel at gmail.com> wrote:> Any ideas on how to troubleshoot? It's a fresh install with a few > site-specific customizations, but I don't think that I've done > anything that would intefere with gdm. It is a relatively minimal > install, so it's possible that I'm missing some needed package.Check in the logs to see if there's anything that will shed some light. /var/log/Xorg.0.log I believe. -- Jim Perrin System Architect - UIT Ft Gordon & US Army Signal Center
On 1/16/06, Josh Kelley <joshkel at gmail.com> wrote:> I'm trying to set up a new CentOS 4.2 desktop, and gdm refuses to > start. It blanks the screen, displays the swirling blue circle mouse > cursor that appears to be an hourglass equivalent, then drops back to > the console window. It repeats this several times then displays the > following error: > > The display server has been shut down about 6 times in the last 90 > seconds, it is likely that something bad is going on. I will wait for > 2 minutes before trying again on display :0.I finally figured out what was wrong. /etc/pango/i386-redhat-linux-gnu/pango.modules was only readable by root (permissions set incorrectly by the installer, perhaps?), so gdmgreeter wasn't able to run. I ended up looking through strace's output to figure this out; annoyingly, gdmgreeter wrote informative error messages to stderr, but gdm apparently discarded the output. (If it logged it anywhere, I couldn't find it.) Josh Kelley