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 <[email protected]> dijo: > On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 5:24 PM, John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> 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. > > _______________________________________________ > > PLUG mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > > > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
