Bombing out to GDM

clpc · 2010-03-13 20:49:47

I am guessing that others may have commented on this 'feature';) , but here is what I have found.

Situation, you boot up login and after a random amount of time (nearly always around the pressing of the enter key) you suddenly find yourself on the GDM login again wishing you had saved the last 10 lines of code you had just typed.

If I boot from power off when I get to the GDM login I press Ctrl+Alt+F2 nothing happens, the reason is that GDM (and effectively Gnome) are on tty 2 and not tty7 as I would expect.
If I login and use my computer I almost always get bombed out to GDM again.

But if I press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and login as root, I then do /etc/rc.d/gdm stop, followed by /etc/rc.d/gdm start I will find that gdm is now on tty7 and after logging in the problem of bombing out to gdm has gone away.

I do have the line 0=Standard vt7 in my /etc/gdm/custom.conf and I was under the impression that this would force gdm to login on tty7.

Sometimes when I boot I have found gdm to be on tty6.
So for a temporary workaround when I first get the gdm login on boot I always do a Ctrl+Alt+F1 and stop gdm and restart it and no more bombing out.

Does anyone have any ideas about this or is it already solved and I just can't find the article.:|

JGC · 2010-03-13 20:54:22

Start gdm as last daemon in DAEMONS or use /etc/inittab. Other configurations are not supported. gdm doesn't claim a specific tty, and xorg will take the first one available. If getty hasn't been attached to the first 6 ttys, Xorg will launch on the 2nd and will crash as soon as getty fires up and catches keystrokes.

clpc · 2010-03-13 21:22:03

Thanks very much for that, I have been scratching my head over that one for a while.
Hopefully the post will get found by others with the same problem.

Clive

clpc · 2010-03-20 08:36:26

Okay, I hate opening old wounds but it seems that placing gdm last in the line of daemons does work sometimes but not all the time.
I have had 2 days now where gdm comes up on tty2.

I looking around for the cause but nothing so far.

Has anyone out there solved this problem?

michy99 · 2010-03-20 14:18:07

Remove gdm from the Daemons line in /etc/rc.conf and change the following two sections of /etc/inittab to read:

## Only one of the following two lines can be uncommented!
# Boot to console
#id:3:initdefault:
# Boot to X11
id:5:initdefault:

and

# Example lines for starting a login manager
#x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon
x:5:respawn:/usr/sbin/gdm -nodaemon
#x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon
#x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/slim >& /dev/null

This will start GDM in run level 5 instead of run level 3 and everything will work as it should.

clpc · 2010-03-21 13:21:36

I have not been able to get to a computer yesterday, But thanks for that, I haven't tried it yet but I am just about to, besides michy99, you look like someone I can trust..ha ha

Arch Linux

#1 2010-03-13 20:49:47

Bombing out to GDM

#2 2010-03-13 20:54:22

Re: Bombing out to GDM

#3 2010-03-13 21:22:03

Re: Bombing out to GDM

#4 2010-03-20 08:36:26

Re: Bombing out to GDM

#5 2010-03-20 14:18:07

Re: Bombing out to GDM

#6 2010-03-21 13:21:36

Re: Bombing out to GDM

Board footer