Arch Linux

fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

GDM fails to start XFCE4 session properly

Hi,

I have setup my Arch box with default runlevel 5 and respawning GDM as per the wiki.  I use XFCE4 desktop environment.

This has worked perfectly for about a month.  For some reason, though, GDM now fails to start an XFCE4 session.  X server and GDM both run.  When I login at the GDM prompt and select XFCE or Default sessions I am presented with a grey screen and no desktop environment.  However, Conky runs and is displayed on the grey screen.

If I change to runlevel 3 and type 'startxfce4' at the prompt everything works fine. 

Can anybody tell me what file/s I need to fix so that GDM loads XFCE4 properly?  The man pages, wiki, forum and google searches haven't turned up any answers.

Extra info:  I looked up my .xsession-errors file and found the following:

/opt/gnome/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
xmodmap:  commandline:0:  bad number of buttons, must have 10 instead of 7
xmodmap:  1 error encountered, aborting.
INFO: imwheel started (pid=4225)
Conky: drawing to root window
Conky: drawing to double buffer

Which suggests that something, somewhere is calling xmodmap incorrectly.  For the life of me I can't figure out where though!

Thanks
Francis

fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

Re: GDM fails to start XFCE4 session properly

Guess nobody has had anything similar then.. Oh well.

I'm reverting to text console login then using startx which works fine.  Pity, I liked having a graphical login.

Francis

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: GDM fails to start XFCE4 session properly

Unless you're particularly attached to gdm, you could try another gui login. I use slim myself - it's in [community].

ozar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2005-02-18

Posts: 1,686

Re: GDM fails to start XFCE4 session properly

Don't know if it would help any, but I noticed that GDM 2.8.0.6-1 has just been uploaded to the Arch repos.

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oz

Kern

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2005-02-09

Posts: 464

Re: GDM fails to start XFCE4 session properly

i had this problem a long while back. just create a new session. (assuming you have xfce-session installed)
that gives you an option when you start XFCE again, to use that session or default. dont choose default, thats the corrupted one, iirc.

After that remove the xfce-session package, and it should run as normal.

hth

fdac

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2005-06-19

Posts: 96

Re: GDM fails to start XFCE4 session properly

Thanks for the replies.

I tried both Slim, XDM and the updated GDM with the same result, suggesting it's the way the login managers are calling the XFCE4 session that is the problem, not the login managers.

Kern, unfortunately your tip didn't seem to work for me.

Too much stuffing around - back to using startx, I think.

Cheers
Francis