[gentoo-user] XSESSION="Xsession" doesn't work!

[Stroller]

Hi there,

I'm fairly experienced with Linux and have been using Gentoo for over 3 years, but mostly I only use it on headless servers, so I'm afraid I don't know much about GUI stuff. I've just installed Gentoo on my PS3, which I want to use mostly for playing DVDs at the moment (and as a MythTV frontend eventually). My expectations when running X (let's say adding /etc/init.d/xdm to the default runlevel) are that I'm presented with a login prompt, there should be a mouse cursor & stuff and when I log in I should be presented with a terminal window in which I can type my command to run `mplayer` or whatever. I'd expect shortly to get mplayer or vlc or something running automatically when the system completes booting-up - this is what MythTV users typically do so that their system behaves more like a TV- appliance than a Linux machine - but I'd like to skip that for the moment whilst I log in as my own user, play with different media players & work out which one suits me best. Gentoo for the PS3 is supplied as a LiveCD for chrooting and a stage4 tarball - I've only ever used stage1 (3 or more years ago) and stage3 (more recently) tarballs in the past. This stage4 is quick to set up and the basics seem to work very well - I can log in at the framebuffer & surf the internet using elinks :D. This stag4 also includes fluxbox, which I haven't used before & am not really interested in but which I haven't uninstalled yet. The Gentoo X Server Configuration HOWTO <http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ xorg-config.xml> has much that doesn't seem relevant to me right now, seeing as the stage comes with both Xorg itself and a suitable xorg.conf for the PS3 preinstalled, but if I skip to just after code listing 3.6 it tells me how the value of XSESSION is read from /etc/ rc.conf

Reading /etc/rc.conf I find:
  # Xsession - will start a terminal and a few other nice apps


What confuses me is that this doesn't work. It works perfectly if I set:
  XSESSION="fluxbox"

but not when I set
  XSESSION="Xsession"

Diagnostics I can think of:
   $ grep ^X /etc/rc.conf
   XSESSION="Xsession"
   $ ls -l /etc/X11/Sessions/
   total 8
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2187 Jun 10 19:31 Xsession
   -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   22 Jun 10 19:50 fluxbox
   $ grep DISPLAYMANAGER /etc/conf.d/xdm
   DISPLAYMANAGER="xdm"

This seem perfect for me. I don't care that it's described elsewhere as ugly - I think this is twm, Xorg's own default window-manager? - but if it pops open a terminal window when I log in, and maybe xclock then I'm good to go. - I get the fluxbox menubar at the bottom of the screen and I can open terminal windows & stuff When I log in remotely & run `sudo /etc/init.d/xdm start` I get a simple login window with an X11-type logo on the right-hand side. Once I use the connected keyboard & mouse - which work perfectly - to enter my user & password I see a window titled "Session Menu"; it appears to have a kind of text box in which is displayed "chooseSessionListWidget" - all I can choose is the "Failsafe / Default" which gives me a grey X11 background with the (correct) chunky black X cursor. No terminals or other windows open and I'm unable to work out how the heck to start an app. When I `sudo /etc/ init.d/xdm restart` via SSH I again get the login window and this time the Session Menu says "fail safe" in the "text box" - I now have extra load session & delete session buttons but they don't do anything useful. I have followed the pointers in the "startx no longer gives gnome" thread <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/185659> but no joy. If, instead of starting `/etc/init.d/xdm`, I log in at the framebuffer prompt and type ` XSESSION="Xsession" startx` I again get the "Session Menu" window and the X cursor, but this time a black background behind that widow and a _black_ screen when I log in.

Stroller.

There's no .xsession stuff in my home directory - I even deleted ~/.*to be paranoid-sure of this. Whups, there goes my bash history!! None of the log files show anything useful or relevant - I've even run `watch -n 0.3 ls -lt /var/log/` and the only ones that change are xdm.log, Xorg.0.log and the weird binary file wtmp. They all show X starting swimingly but not the sesssion stuff. I don't know what else to say. What's weird is that I _did_ see the expected terminal windows opening yesterday, but I can't reproduce them now. The behaviour seemed to be correct when I ran `startx` but not when I added xdm to the default runlevel & started it that way. But now it doesn't work at all. I've attached the actual /etc/X11/Sessions/Xsession file, but I'm sure this is unchanged - I'm sure it's exactly as shipped by Gentoo by default. I've thought about replacing that with a simple `echo "hello world`", but I'm not sure how to do that within the X11 environment. Many thanks indeed for the time you've taken reading this, and for your patience and in advance for any help or suggestions you can offer,

Xsession
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