CentOS - Jun 2015 - more newbie questions -- init 5 works, init 3 doesn't for "normal" users

OK, after 3 tries I got CentOS 6.6 installed (don't ask). Now something
very odd is happening. My regular user, me, can not login  to level 3
without odd errors.

I get /home/<username> not found when it's there and setup with
correct
permissions -- well here I am using it in run level 5 just fine!

So, my normal user is left logged in at /root. Even if I move over to
the correct /home area and then try startx (my preferred way of doing
business), it does NOT start. Tries all kinds of things, and finally fails.

My next step is to take a look at the gnome startup script vs startx to
see if I can figure out the differences if no one has encountered this
before.

ps. the partitioning tool DID work, but a LOT of futzing with this. I
finally did end up with combining my old /opt and /usr with /, so
hopefully I won't run into any issues later.
-- 
--------------------------------------------
MzK

"We can all sleep easy at night knowing that
 somewhere at any given time,
 the Foo Fighters are out there fighting Foo."
                          -- David Letterman

On 06/10/2015 05:25 PM, Kay Schenk wrote:
> I get /home/<username> not found when it's there and setup with
correct
> permissions -- well here I am using it in run level 5 just fine!
Log in as root, and watch /var/log/messages, /var/log/secure, and 
/var/log/audit/audit.log while a "normal" user logs in.

# tail -n0 -f /var/log/messages /var/log/secure /var/log/audit/audit.log
> So, my normal user is left logged in at /root.
/root or / ?  The two are different, and non-root users should not have 
access to /root
> My next step is to take a look at the gnome startup script vs startx to
> see if I can figure out the differences if no one has encountered this
> before.
startx runs the X server, which will in turn run an X session.  Gnome 
doesn't have a "startup script" per se, but if it did, it would be
an X
session, something that runs after / under startx.  There's nothing 
there to compare.

However, you could capture startx output and execution for debugging:

$ sh -x /usr/bin/startx > startx.trace 2>&1

The file "startx.trace" will have a list of all of the commands run,
and
all of their output (including errors).

/var/log/X* might be interesting as well.

On 06/10/2015 10:06 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 06/10/2015 05:25 PM, Kay Schenk wrote:
>> I get /home/<username> not found when it's there and setup
with correct
>> permissions -- well here I am using it in run level 5 just fine!
> 
> Log in as root, and watch /var/log/messages, /var/log/secure, and
> /var/log/audit/audit.log while a "normal" user logs in.
> 
> # tail -n0 -f /var/log/messages /var/log/secure /var/log/audit/audit.log
> 
>> So, my normal user is left logged in at /root.
> 
> /root or / ?  The two are different, and non-root users should not have
> access to /root
> 
>> My next step is to take a look at the gnome startup script vs startx to
>> see if I can figure out the differences if no one has encountered this
>> before.
> 
> startx runs the X server, which will in turn run an X session.  Gnome
> doesn't have a "startup script" per se, but if it did, it
would be an X
> session, something that runs after / under startx.  There's nothing
> there to compare.
> 
> However, you could capture startx output and execution for debugging:
> 
> $ sh -x /usr/bin/startx > startx.trace 2>&1
> 
> The file "startx.trace" will have a list of all of the commands
run, and
> all of their output (including errors).
> 
> /var/log/X* might be interesting as well.
OK, this last bit sounds promising although this works as expected for
root -- starts up gnome flawlessly. My previous setup imported settings
to use a display manager, etc. So, I need to check on this.

Right now, one of my main concerns is that my old /home
partition/direction is supposedly associated WITH current users I setup
and yet...NOT! The system does not recognize this association even
though it asked me about setting it up when I created my first real user
on installation. I had to go in and reset uids but that's no biggie and
this process has worked fine before.  I can't help but think this is
related to the startx issue.


-- 
--------------------------------------------
MzK

"We can all sleep easy at night knowing that
 somewhere at any given time,
 the Foo Fighters are out there fighting Foo."
                          -- David Letterman