[SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

Zonqt · 2013-01-10 03:46:01

I just recently installed Arch, everything worked out okay with that by the end of the instructions. When I say 'everything' I mean upto the extra subsection. After that I started to load 'sudo' and 'X' and 'SLiM' and 'XFCE', this is where I'm not sure if I have things are working correctly.

Here's the problem:
When I reboot the computer it goes to the Grub2 screen fine, then after a series of three loud beeps I come to the default SLiM login screen (the pink one). When I type my root account and password, my XFCE DE loads fine, but when load user account details, the screen goes back to the normal login command prompt without Display Manager, then blanks out and returns to the SLiM login screen. I don't know if the beeping is related to this problem, or something else entirely, but I thought I mention it in case it rings any bells.

I tried to delete my user account and add it back, it doesn't work. I also tried to uninstall SLiM and reinstall, also doesn't work. I'm sure I'm just making a newbie error, but after reading the documentation a few times I don't seem to know what I'm doing wrong.

Any help is appreciated.

Last edited by Zonqt (2013-01-10 18:13:19)

Trilby · 2013-01-10 03:55:13

Part of the problem in diagnosing this comes from the fact that you tried to add everything at once.

Disable the slim service and boot to multi-user.target, then start x with xinit. When this fails, come back with error messages or results. If/when this is sucessful you can move on to getting slim working.

EDIT: were you able to start twm as described in the Xorg wiki? You won't need twm in the end, but if this is your first time installing arch, you really should walk through every single step.

Last edited by Trilby (2013-01-10 03:56:35)

henk · 2013-01-10 04:42:05

I tried Slim the first few days I worked with Arch, and got it working for me as a user by copying
the root's xinitrc to my home directory. My thoughts on this were like: if you point Slim in the
direction of a specific user, that specific user should also provide a xinitrc to Slim to work with.

Zonqt · 2013-01-10 04:42:52

Alright, so I disabled slim service, and the screen has gone back to the normal login screen. I can log into both root and my user account. Here is my running "journalctl -b" here. (of course I had to start xfce to be able to post this on pastebin, since I didn't know any way to do this directly from the command line.)

does twm stand for "the window manager"? I didn't go through those steps of the guide because they were listed as optional. I just got a Display Manager (slim) and a Desktop Environment (xfce).

Sorry for posting this so late, I like to tinker around a bit before posting for help (to not be hasty).

Zonqt · 2013-01-10 04:54:39

henk wrote:

I tried Slim the first few days I worked with Arch, and got it working for me as a user by copying
the root's xinitrc to my home directory. My thoughts on this were like: if you point Slim in the
direction of a specific user, that specific user should also provide a xinitrc to Slim to work with.

Can you be more specific? I already had a file ~/.xinitrc, since the the docs instructed to copy the skel/.xinitrc to the ~ directory (I'm reading from the slim docs). I'll do something in the morning.

Thanks for everyone's responses so far, and keep them coming.

Last edited by Zonqt (2013-01-10 05:38:04)

WonderWoofy · 2013-01-10 05:37:00

Well, you surely need to have some kind of .xinitrc in your home folder, as this is what slim reads and executes. This should also be what startx or xinit exceture as well. So if you are so unsure about having an xinitrc in your home folder, it makes me wonder, how is it that you started xfce to post that pastebin?

anonymous_user · 2013-01-10 05:37:08

You copy the example .xinitrc from /etc/skel/.xinitrc, then edit it to run whatever DE/WM you want:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xi … ng_started

And if you haven't yet read it, also look at the wiki page for Slim:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Slim

Last edited by anonymous_user (2013-01-10 05:37:52)

Max-P · 2013-01-10 05:41:11

Zonqt wrote:

Can you be more specific? Are you saying you simply did "cp .xinitrc /home/.xinitrc"? and that solved the problem? Because I did that and it didn't solve anything.
I also didn't see anything about this in the docs?

Are you sure the permissions are correct? If you simply did that, the .xinitrc is probably owned by root, so your normal user fails to load that.

Describe how do you load XFCE as a normal user too. Normally, logging in into the console and typing "startx" shoud load your DE. If you have to start it manually with startxfce4 and startx doesn't work, then there's a problem with the .xinitrc.

Also, twm doesn't mean anything, it's not an acronym. It's a program name, a window manager by itself, one of the most basic ones. This, exactly: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extr … /xorg-twm/

Zonqt · 2013-01-10 05:41:50

anonymous_user wrote:

You copy the example .xinitrc from /etc/skel/.xinitrc, then edit it to run whatever DE/WM you want:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xi … ng_started
And if you haven't yet read it, also look at the wiki page for Slim:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Slim

Yes, I read this part. I edited my earlier post to reflect this. Sorry if I confused anyone. I just didn't understand what henk meant by copying from the root to the home, since I copied from /etc/skel/.xinitrc

Same to you WonderWoofy.

So yes to everyone, there is a .xinitrc in home (as the slim docs instruct).

WonderWoofy · 2013-01-10 05:47:07

So what is it your xinitrc has in it? And you didn't answer my question of how you started X to post that into pastebin (without slim).

Zonqt · 2013-01-10 05:57:46

WonderWoofy wrote:

So what is it your xinitrc has in it? And you didn't answer my question of how you started X to post that into pastebin (without slim).

I started X using root, remember I can still access my DE using root account through slim (or even without slim by running "startx"). I just tried to run "startx" using my user account and it failed (here's the problem). I'm currently trying to find a way to post the logs online.

WonderWoofy · 2013-01-10 06:07:24

posting logs online can be done with wgetpaste from the repos, as mentioned in that beginners guide you said that you followed so closely. There is even an example on how you could post your xinitrc specifically.

So this is the issue, you are saying you have problems (I think we all assumed that). But your posts hardly give any detail about what is actually going on. For example you come back saying that xfce works fine form the command line, but fail to indicate that it still doesn't work as your user. You need to be more specific and also actually answer questions that are asked of you if you want help. You don't know how to pastebin from the cli, fine, open up that file and carefully type what you have in there into a post. We cannot sit here and guess what it is you have going on.

Zonqt · 2013-01-10 06:10:21

Here are the logs, I got these from xorg: here. From it seems like there is something interfering with my graphics driver, but I want you guys to take a look at it before I do something. Is this the same conclusion you guys are reaching? I think I should remove the driver and try reinstalling it, or another one.

thanks for the replies.

Zonqt · 2013-01-10 06:15:37

I apologize if you guys seem to think that I'm not answering the questions you guys have, but it just seems like I'm being bombarded with all these questions that by the time I check my system to answer one two more appear in queue. Don't forget I'm rebooting the computer each time I try something new, to see if it worked (and this takes time).

Anyways, it's getting late, and I going to have to go to bed. I do appreciate all the help I'm receiving, and I thank all you guys for it.

WonderWoofy · 2013-01-10 06:19:38

Why are you rebooting your computer? This is not windows, you don't have to reboot when you do trivial things like install software.

And bombarded? There is nowhere in this thread that there are two posts in a row that are not you...

anonymous_user · 2013-01-10 06:35:57

If Slim loads and you can login as root, I hardly think the graphics driver is the problem.

Like someone mentioned earlier, I would check the permissions of your the .xinitrc file on your $HOME folder.

flocke · 2013-01-10 07:38:46

Could you post the .xinitrc from your users home dir?

Trilby · 2013-01-10 12:40:43

Zonqt wrote:

does twm stand for "the window manager"? I didn't go through those steps of the guide because they were listed as optional.

Trilby wrote:

You won't need twm in the end, but if this is your first time installing arch, you really should walk through every single step.

They are listed as optional for those who have installed arch before. The guide was well written so that you can follow it and learn what you need to learn. You skipped steps, which is fine, but when you skip steps and fail you should go back and try doing it as recommended.

So I'll offer the same advise again: take a systematic approach to solving the problem going step by step: make sure X works, then make sure your WM works, then get slim working. When you try to jump to step three and fail, there is no way to know where the problem is aside from random guessing.

I suspect in this case, some of the random guesses above will be right - but solving a problem by following up on guesses will teach you nothing, and you'll run into a similar problem later. Solving a problem by working through the proper steps will ensure you know how and why it works and you will be able to avoid similar problems in the future.

henk · 2013-01-10 17:18:29

Sorry for the late response; just got back from work.

I did install slim as root, and followed the steps as mentioned in the wiki. An got the same result as Zonqt.

I then did as root (Trilby is correct btw, is was more guessing then actually knowing)

cp ~/.xinitrc /home/henk/
chmod 777 /home/henk/.xinitrc

Last edited by henk (2013-01-10 17:19:59)

Zonqt · 2013-01-10 18:12:08

henk wrote:

Sorry for the late response; just got back from work.
I did install slim as root, and followed the steps as mentioned in the wiki. An got the same result as Zonqt.
I then did as root (Trilby is correct btw, is was more guessing then actually knowing)
cp ~/.xinitrc /home/henk/
chmod 777 /home/henk/.xinitrc

You did it!! It's working now. It was a file permission problem. Yes, I also apparently loaded slim as root.

I'm marking this problem as solved, but as a follow up question, I want to ask: Does it really matter if I loaded slim as root? I look back to the slim docs and see that the code "cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc ~" in the "single environments" subsection was preceded by a $, but that was the only warning of loading this as a "user". If there was another section of the docs that discussed this, I didn't find it (and maybe other new installers can't either).

I'm not too worried, atleast they'll find this thread.

One final question, when I used the command to start xfce manually before solving this, and as a user, I was taken to xfce desktop.... but not this one. It seems I got a brand new default desktop after following the above solution? Why did I just get a new desktop configuration?

anonymous_user · 2013-01-10 18:15:02

Possibly another permissions problem? Check ~/.config/xfce4

WonderWoofy · 2013-01-10 23:42:51

Because root is a different user than you. So you customized the xfce desktop as root, not you.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-01-10 03:46:01

[SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#2 2013-01-10 03:55:13

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#3 2013-01-10 04:42:05

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#4 2013-01-10 04:42:52

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#5 2013-01-10 04:54:39

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#6 2013-01-10 05:37:00

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#7 2013-01-10 05:37:08

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#8 2013-01-10 05:41:11

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#9 2013-01-10 05:41:50

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#10 2013-01-10 05:47:07

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#11 2013-01-10 05:57:46

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#12 2013-01-10 06:07:24

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#13 2013-01-10 06:10:21

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#14 2013-01-10 06:15:37

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#15 2013-01-10 06:19:38

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#16 2013-01-10 06:35:57

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#17 2013-01-10 07:38:46

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#18 2013-01-10 12:40:43

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#19 2013-01-10 17:18:29

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#20 2013-01-10 18:12:08

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#21 2013-01-10 18:15:02

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

#22 2013-01-10 23:42:51

Re: [SOLVED] New Installation, SLiM only allows root login...

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