FYI, my DAEMONS entry looks like:
DAEMONS=(pcmcia !inetd network crond sshd exim esd fam !cups mailtunnel gdm)
Hey farphel, I've done a bit of experimenting with the DAEMONS ordering and I notice you've !banged-out 'inetd' which is a requirement for 'fam', ...which also needs 'portmap'. Don't know if that is intentional, but, I believe 'fam' wont start without it.
HTH.
]]>i am not sure of the order of execution but i think devfsd.conf is started before rc.conf and in rc.conf the modules array is executed before the daemons array.
just speculating though.
]]>I decided to move to RL 5 so I have to start esd at bootup to avoid the above problem.
I put esd in rc.conf but it complain about that /dev/dsp is not present.
So I got back to RL 3 (may it help) but esd still does not start at bootup with the same error.
Suggestion??
P.S. for farphel
I took a look at your post, the correct way to start gdm is to change init tab as follow
#
# /etc/inittab
#
# Runlevels:
# 0 Halt
# 1(S) Single-user
# 2 Not used
# 3 Multi-user
# 4 Not used
# 5 X11
# 6 Reboot
# original run level is 3 text mode
#id:3:initdefault:
# change it to 5
id:5:initdefault:
rc::sysinit:/etc/rc.sysinit
rs:S1:wait:/etc/rc.single
rm:2345:wait:/etc/rc.multi
rh:06:wait:/etc/rc.shutdown
su:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin -p
c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 vc/1 linux
c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 vc/2 linux
c3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 vc/3 linux
c4:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 vc/4 linux
c5:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 vc/5 linux
c6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 vc/6 linux
ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now
#what to do in run level 5????
#xdm is the default login manager, personally I prefer gdm
#x:5:respawn:/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon
# I am not sure about -noademon for gdm but anyway does not cause problem
x:5:respawn:/usr/X11R6/bin/gdm -nodaemon
However, with Arch when I decied I wanted to try out Gnome all I did was add gdm to my DAEMONS entry in /etc/rc.conf. My /etc/inittab still shows runlevel 3 as my default. I believe the difference is you are expecting a SYSV-ilke startup where there are different runlevels. I believe Arch uses more of BSD-like startup where booting is controlled by specific rc scripts.
I don't know this definitively, but you could try my setup to see if that helps. It will probably work if you're using gdm/kdm. If you're using regular xdm, you may need to whip up your own startup script in /etc/rc.d and add it to your DAEMONS entry in /etc/rc.conf.
FYI, my DAEMONS entry looks like:
DAEMONS=(pcmcia !inetd network crond sshd exim esd fam !cups mailtunnel gdm)
Hope that helps,
farphel