Curious GUI problem

[David Fokkema]

On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 01:28:24PM -0600, W wrote:

> The install had the "vesa" graphics driver at the top of the list during
> the install so I figured that the install system had probed my video
> card and was recommending this driver as it was at the top of the
> list and the rest were in alphabetical order. My graphics card is an
> ATI Rage 128.

Probably you will want to use another driver (in due time). You could
try the 'ati' driver, but I would recommend to look up the thread which
was on the list a few weeks ago on new drivers released by ati.

> Any way, I get a graphical login screen but when I login as root

That is good. You now know that X Windows works. So this almost
certainly has nothing to do with video drivers, resolutions, colour
depths etc.

BTW: _don't_ login as root. Login as a regular user. You _have_ a regular
user account, don't you?

> it attempts to load KDE but then returns back the login screen like there
> was an error. I am wondering what I did wrong in the setup to have it

First try logging in as a normal user. Then, if KDE still backs out,
try to login using another window manager (should be selectable on the
login screen). If that _does_ work, there is something wrong with KDE.
Check as much error logs as you can find: .xsession-errors in your home
dir, /var/log/*

HTH,

David


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[Andreas Janssen]

Hello

W (<woodland@a1above.net>) wrote:

> I just loaded version 3.0r0 on a secondary system so I can learn
> how to setup and use Debian. I am more accustom to the Hat and
> the Geco. The reason I want to use Debain is it is said to be the
> most stable Linux distro.
>
> The install had the "vesa" graphics driver at the top of the list
> during the install so I figured that the install system had probed my
> video card and was recommending this driver as it was at the top of
> the list and the rest were in alphabetical order. My graphics card is
> an ATI Rage 128.

There is also an "ati" driver in the list. As far as I know debconf does
not probe your graphics board, and the vesa driver was probably
presented on top of the list because it will run with nearly all
boards. You can use "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" to reconfigure
the server.

> Any way, I get a graphical login screen but when I login as root
> it attempts to load KDE but then returns back the login screen like
> there was an error. I am wondering what I did wrong in the setup to
> have it do this. Does anyone have an idea what is going on? I did set
> the resolution during the install for 1280 x 1024 and 24 bit as my
> monitor is capable of this resolution.

XFree will write a configuration file (/var/log/Xfree86.0.log), but as
your login screen works, I don't think you have a problem with your X
configuration.

Are all the important KDE packages installed? Try
apt-get install kdebase
Does it work with other window managers, for example twm? I /think/ the
standard window manager that is used if you log in with xdm is defined
in /etc/alternatives/x-session-managers. Use
update-alternatives --config x-session-manager
to change it. You can also change your login manager (for example by
installing kdm).

best regards
Andreas Janssen

--
Andreas Janssen
[email]andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com[/email]
PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC801674
Registered Linux User #267976


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[Bret Comstock Waldow]

On Tue, 2003-08-05 at 15:28, W wrote:

> Any way, I get a graphical login screen but when I login as root
> it attempts to load KDE but then returns back the login screen like there
> was an error. I am wondering what I did wrong in the setup to have it
> do this. Does anyone have an idea what is going on? I did set the
> resolution during the install for 1280 x 1024 and 24 bit as my monitor is
> capable of this resolution.

I've seen this behavior when I used an existing set of user files with a
distro that mapped that user to a different ID number. So, RedHat
labelled my user UID 500, and Debian maps it to 1000. The files
couldn't be written to, so temporaries couldn't be set up, etc.

Since you're logging in as root (UID=0), I don't see how that could
happen, but problems with permissions on files has at least caused these
symptoms for me.

Cheers,
Bret

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bwaldow at alum dot mit dot edu


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