Confirmed!: there must not be any other jobs running at the time nodm starts, else nodm usually cannot set itself up in the precious five seconds the authors have allotted, unless one has expensive Italian hardware.
In /etc/rc.local I now do ( sleep 66; batch <<EOF apt-show-versions|egrep '\*|newer than version in archive' EOF )& to make sure it starts long after nodm has successfully launched. And lo and behold, I can now start nodm from rc.local on all my computers! So all along it was that author in his Ferrari responsible for those RACE conditions. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org