Re: Help with GNOME

[Tom Gilbert <gilbertt tomgilbert freeserve co uk>]

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999 jaiden@planetarymotion.net wrote:

>Okay I have REdhat 5.2 on an Intel machine...I just got all the GNOME
>RPMS installed..it says in the readme that to use GNOME I need to put
>exec gnome-session in either xsession, xclients, or xinitrc..my /root
>dir has none of those..I don't have an account created for myself
>because I am not hooked to a network..and I can do everything prett well
>from the root login..Can someone help me please
>
>
>-Derek McLaughlin

It doesn't matter that you aren't hooked onto a network. You must *not*
run stuff as root. There are many, many reasons for this, and i won't go
through them all right now, as you have RH5.2, i can safely say RTFM, as
Redhat gives very sane reasons to create yourself an account.

For now, you should know that certain programs will not let you run them
if you are logged on as root!

You are in a good position right now, with a clean system, to sort this
out. YOur alternative is to get yourself set up as root, learn stuff,
configure stuff etc. Then one day you will learn enough to know that
root=bad, and you will have to re-configure everything for another user.
(If you haven't already screwed up your whole distro because there are few
failsafes for dangerous root commands!).

PLEASE! Do this!

$ adduser derek
$ passwd derek
{set password}
{logout}
{login as derek}

Now we'll help you with your problem.

It depends on your runlevel. If you login and are presented with a prompt,
it is 3, if you get a graphical login screen, it is 5. I presume 3, as
this is the default for 5.2.
The file you need to modify in this case is ~/.xinitrc (~ means the home
dir of the user you're logged in as, the shell understands this
character).
If it doesn't exist, create it (it should though, RH5.2 has rpms called
xinitrc and etc-skel which provide this).

To run gnome the file should contain the following.

#!/bin/sh
cd ~/
exec gnome-session

That's it! You can omit the cd ~/ line (I use that to make sure all my
xterms start there in X, wherever I typed startx from).

You can put other stuff in there too, but it must be before the exec
gnome-session line. If you have an existing .xinitrc file, add the exec
bit to the end and comment out any existing line (it might be exec wmaker,
exec something else, or a RH script to run a certain wm).

Also, other stuff you put in there should not use exec, and each command
should end with & (to run in the background). I have stuff like

(sleep 8; rt -fn nexus -g 150x9+5+5 -fork /var/log/messages,blue -reload 5
/var/log/messages) &

(rt is a cool logging app).

You only really need to play with xsession, xclients etc if you're running
runlevel 5. I prefer the option of typing startx, or poking around at the
commandline level. Being thrown straight in to X is annoying if you only
want to check mail.

Let me know how you get one. But please don't keep using root. :-)

Tom.
-- 
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