Re: Much oddness

[George <jirka 5z com>]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 11:28:11AM +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
> Literally overnight, gdm has gone ballistic on my RH9 machine (a Dell
> laptop).
> 
> The RH9 rpm version won't start up at all any more, it just thinks about
> it for a while after X has started, then pops up what looks like the "an
> X server is already running on :0" dialog, except with the words
> replaced by "?~@:@#$!@", or words to that effect.  (The Yes and No
> buttons are still legible, though.)

The rh9 rpm is of a somewhat buggy version (anything not completely current
is somewhat buggy, and the only reason current is not buggy is because I
haven't yet noticed the bugs :)

> So, I uninstalled the gdm2 RPM and built my own version, which starts up
> fine... but it won't let me type anything in, the username field shows
> "..." all the time and it constantly pops up the "Authentication failed,
> letters must be typed in correct case" message before I've typed
> anything, as if some ghostly gegl is typing things into it before I get
> a chance.  

The "..." means that something is going horribly wrong with the communication
between the greeter and daemon since "..." is the initial text in the text
entry (to get around an old GtkEntry vs GnomeCanvas bug I think).  It seems
like installation is all wankers what configure parameters are you using?

> Weird part... any version of gdm I build myself behaves the same way...
> *unless* I reinstall the RH9 rpms as well, in which case the self-built
> version (installed in another directory) works just fine.
> 
> xdm and kdm work just fine too.
> 
> This may be well some bizarre hardware issue rather than gdm's fault,
> but does anybody know where to start looking?

I would more say it's some installation weirdness for the self-built part and
a gdm bug on the rh9 version.  There are various "issues" with the X server
doing something evil and gdm not responding the best possible way with older
gdms which should be mostly fixed in the newest (2.6.0.0 version)

George

-- 
George <jirka 5z com>
   Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
                       -- Pablo Picasso