Arch Linux

Caelum

Member

Registered: 2012-07-10

Posts: 4

Website

[SOLVED] Can't get GDM to run - what am I doing wrong?

Alright, I'm running a fresh, up to date install of Arch in a virtual machine, and I'm consistently unable to get GDM to work properly. I pretty much followed the beginners' guide, and tried reinstalling from scratch several times. I've installed gdm, gnome, gnome-extra, dbus, and anything else the wiki recommends, like virtualbox-archlinux-additions. I edited /etc/inittab and /etc/rc.conf accordingly.

Relevant lines in /etc/inittab:

#Boot to X11
id:5:initdefault:

x:5:respawn:/usr/sbin/gdm -nodaemon

Relevant lines in /etc/rc.conf:

MODULES=(vboxguest vboxsf vboxvideo)

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng dbus network crond)

When I start the virtual machine, it displays the CLI login interface along with a bunch of warnings:

Arch Linux 3.4.4-2-ARCH (tty1)

vbox login: gdm-binary[388]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.271335 seconds
gdm-binary[388]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.011053 seconds
gdm-binary[388]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.011250 seconds
gdm-binary[388]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.010699 seconds
gdm-binary[388]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.010361 seconds
gdm-binary[388]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.010921 seconds
gdm-binary[388]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: GdmLocalDisplayFactory: maximum number of X display failures reached: check X server log for errors

After that, I can still log in just fine, though I obviously never get into any desktop environment because of it. I have no idea where to find the X server log. I skimmed through /var/log, but couldn't find any log file with remotely helpful contents besides 'gdm'. The contents of the 'gdm' file:

** (gdm-binary:519): WARNING **: Failed to acquire org.gnome.DisplayManager

** (gdm-binary:519): WARNING **: Could not acquire name; bailing out

I've been bashing my head against this problem for several days now, but been unable to actually fix it. Anyone feel like pointing out what I'm doing wrong or how to proceed?

Last edited by Caelum (2012-07-11 19:44:04)

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: [SOLVED] Can't get GDM to run - what am I doing wrong?

have you tried putting gdm in the DAEMONS array and not changing the inittab?

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Caelum

Member

Registered: 2012-07-10

Posts: 4

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Can't get GDM to run - what am I doing wrong?

Yeah, I have. Exact same problem.

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,307

Re: [SOLVED] Can't get GDM to run - what am I doing wrong?

Have you already tried to start a plain x server manually?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Be … #Testing_X

Last edited by progandy (2012-07-11 19:18:14)

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wonder

Developer

From: Bucharest, Romania

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 5,941

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Re: [SOLVED] Can't get GDM to run - what am I doing wrong?

did you install virtualbox-archlinux-additions ?

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Caelum

Member

Registered: 2012-07-10

Posts: 4

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Can't get GDM to run - what am I doing wrong?

Aaaand figured it out thanks to that one. I skipped starting it manually in this VM; got it to work when started manually on a previous install, and hence assumed it'd be fine.

Turns out, I was doing the installations of the base packages - # pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils - wrong somehow. I think I must've missed that step or something; installing xorg-server and xorg-server-utils through Pacman just now solved my problem.

Thanks for the help. Much appreciated.

EDIT: Wonder, you ninja you.

Last edited by Caelum (2012-07-11 19:45:28)