[PLUG] Now I've done it

[John Jason Jordan]

Major progress!

I booted to the regular session and, at the login prompt, selected XFCE
session. After logging in XFCE came up *with mouse and keyboard*. I am
functional again!

Now I have a terminal in X, so hopefully I can fix Gnome.


On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:52:20 -0800
John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> dijo:

> Thanks for the suggestions. I'm still not functional, but I did things
> and stuff happened.
> 
> First, still booted into the Karmic live CD I created an ~/.xinitrc
> file (none existed before) and put "exec gnome-session" in it. Then I
> rebooted to the regular boot option in Grub. Result: No change; that
> is, mouse and keyboard worked, but no window manager and no gnome-panel.
> 
> Next I booted to Recovery Mode and logged in as root. I installed
> xfce4, then edited jjj's .xinitrc file by changing the line to "exec
> xfce4-session." Then I switched user to jjj and did cd to my home
> folder. And then I did startx. Result: When X came up I had panels and
> a desktop, but no mouse or keyboard. There was a popup message "failed
> to initialize HAL."
> 
> For my third exercise I shut down (had to use the power button) then
> restarted to the regular session. After logging in as jjj I got the
> same blank Gnome desktop without a panel or window manager.
> 
> Not sure what this means.
> 
> 
> On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:08:30 -0800
> Rogan Creswick <creswick at gmail.com> dijo:
> 
> > On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 5:24 PM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
> > >  If I startx as jjj I get
> > > a window without metacity or gnome panel, but the USB mouse and
> > > keyboard work. Great choices, eh?
> > 
> > This *really* sounds like something related to gnome-session is not working.
> > 
> > I'm assuming that (1) you were logging in via a graphical log-in
> > manager, rather than at a console and then running startx.
> > 
> > Since startx doesn't give you a window manager, but doesn't cause
> > (obvious) errors, you can probably start debugging things by just
> > creating an ~/.xinitrc file with different commands to run when X
> > starts (via startx).
> > 
> > First off, I'd put this in your ~/.xinitrc: (and nothing else -- if
> > you *have* a ~/.xinitrc already, please let us know what's in there.)
> > 
> > exec gnome-session
> > 
> > I suspect that that will get you back to about the same place root is
> > at now--in any case it will help figure out what's going on.
> > 
> > You can also specify different window managers / desktop managers in
> > the same way (replace 'gnome-session' with the respective command for
> > whatever WM you want to run, eg: start-kde)
> > 
> > You may want to install xfce4, just so you have another full-featured
> > WM to test with.  If you want to, specify:
> > 
> > exec xfce4-session
> > 
> > in your ~/.xinitrc after installing xcfe4 ('sudo apt-get install
> > xfce4' at a terminal should do it)
> > 
> > This *does not* sound like a problem with X -- X is running, so I
> > don't suggest tweaking your X config.
> > 
> > --Rogan
> > 
> > >
> > > Last time this happened right after installing Blueman. But this time I
> > > did not install Blueman, so it must be something else that has messed
> > > up the desktop. It could be any of hundreds of things. What am I
> > > supposed to do, reboot after every little change to make sure the
> > > change did not mess up the desktop? Is testing really this flakey?
> > >
> > > Last time I was able to right-click on the desktop and create a
> > > launcher to start a terminal. But this time right-clicking on the
> > > desktop does nothing.
> > >
> > > I am sending this from mydesktop computer. I thought I could get into
> > > my mail program by booting to a Karmic live CD on the laptop. The live
> > > CD mounted the testing drive all right. And it let me transfer the Mail
> > > folder to the live CD. But it won't let me transfer the ~/.sylpheed-2.0
> > > file that has my mail accounts in it, not even from the command line as
> > > root. Strange that the live CD lets me read the mail folder but not the
> > > configuration file. What kind of security is that? Of course, I could
> > > also replace the new hard drive with the old Jaunty drive and boot to
> > > Jaunty.
> > >
> > > So here I sit all bummed.
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
> > >
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