Re: Problems with GNOME, reposting

[Gleef <dzol virtual-yellow com>]

On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Amit Bapat wrote:
[lightly edited for readability]
> I have lots of problems with gnome.
> I hope this is the right place to discuss them. I could not get much
> help searching dejanews archives.

Hi!  Yes, this is the right place to discuss this.  I hope I can be of
some help.


> BTW, are there any gnome related discussion groups?

GNOME works mostly through mailing lists (like this one).  Check out
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/index.shtml for a list of them.


> I am new to Linux (not new to unix though).
> 
> Here it goes:
> First about my machine.
> 
> Celeron 300, 64MB RAM, ATI Xpert 98 AGP (yes, I use XF86_Mach64).
> With RedHat 5.2. and Gnome 1.0
> 
> 1. Gnome starts with the default window manager as E. How do I
>    change it?  NO. I could not do it thru' Control-Center. When
>    click on Window Manager I don't see anything at all.

You should be able to change manually it by editing the
$prefix/share/gnome/default.wm file  (If you are going from the RPMs,
it will be in /usr/share/gnome/default.wm).  The window manager
selection capplet is new, and not fully tested yet.

Alternately, you can make sure you have an xterm (or rxvt or whatever)
open, exit out of Enlightenment (like you did in question 2), and then run the
window manager you want from the xterm.  When you next log out of
GNOME, it will save this new window manager as the one to use when you
start it up.


> 2. When I click middle mouse button in root window I get E
>    menus. Once I clicked on logout menu option on that menu. What it
>    only did was to shut down E.  But not the gnome session. So I
>    logged out by selecting Log out from the Panel system menu.  Now
>    when I next time start a gnome-session, E won't start. What's
>    wrong?

The root menu was enlightenment's, so exiting there just exited
enlightenment.  When you selected Log out from panel, gnome-session
saved your session, and dutifully remembered that you were running
without a window manager.  When you next started it up, it started you
up just as it thought you wanted it, with no window manager.

Start up an xterm from the Foot menu, run the window manager you want,
and then Log out from the Foot.  It should remember your new window
manager now.

If your session is too far gone to get to an xterm or the foot menu,
exit out of X entirely, and "rm ~/.gnome/session".  That will erase
your personal session management settings and start you up again with
the default.


> 3. Once the whole display froze. So I hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill
>    X.  But when I start a new gnome session, my panel is bare. I
>    mean all the launchers, pager, clock and other applets that I had
>    put on the panel are gone! Where did my settings go?

Eek!  Panel shouldn't have blanked just because you did a
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.  See if you can recreate the problem.  If you
recreate it, send in a bug report.  See
http://bugs.gnome.org/Reporting.html for more info.

Your panel settings are stored in the ~/.gnome/panel.d directory.
Look there for files called panel or Applet*, you might be able to
find your old settings.


> 4. gdm won't let me login ever. I double chekcked. I always type my
>    password correctly. No luck. I have a user/group gdm. But it
>    won't work.

Unfortunately, I haven't touched gdm.  I can't help you here.

Best of Luck
-Gleef