Thanks for your help. I finally gave up and upgraded from 6.0 to 6.2 of
RedHat, which of course solved the problem. If it happens again, I'll try
your suggestions.
The main symptom was that I never got the GDM login after rebooting. If I
did startx from root, it worked okay.
Dennis
-----Original Message-----
From: Anand Kumria [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, 11 August 2000 13:01
To: Dennis M. Gray
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [SLUG] gdm problems
On Thu, Aug 10, 2000 at 09:38:14AM +1000, Dennis M. Gray wrote:
> Sorry this message is a bit long but I need a clue. Thanks.
>
> Last night I reported that I am no longer able to start my display after a
> crash I suffered with VMWare. I have not had the time to research the
> problem thoroughly so hope I can get some pointers from here. Since my
> posting last night I have discovered the following message in my messages
> log:
>
> Aug 10 08:31:14 xxxxxxxx gdm[984]: gdm_server_usr1_handler: Could not open
> display :0
GDM is the Gnome Display Manager.
> If I shut down everything then run startx as root, I can bring up a
display.
> I get an authentication error when I start from another user.
It sounds as if /tmp does not have the correct permissions (1777) drwxrwxrwt
as a lot of things break if they can't write there - amongst them X.
> I also see this message in the log:
>
> Aug 9 19:36:44 xxxxxxxx gdm[650]: gdm_auth_secure_display: Could not
unlink
> /var/gdm/:0.xauth file: No such file or directory
>
> This message has appeared in the log many times before last nights
problem.
> I checked for the file and it is there.
Hmm, perhaps the problem is permissions on /var
>I am not sure what the message
> means. I haven't looked yet for docs on gdm but have noticed there seems
to
> be no man page installed on my system.
Before you investiagte why GDM is failing you will need to figure out
why X doesn't start as another user.
GDM simplys boots X and display a login screen so it will (should) work
once X does again.
Anand
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