Re: Gnome freezes just after it loads

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 09:46:46AM -0500 or thereabouts, Scott Campbell wrote:
> I am running Linux 7.2, and have had a really hard time with getting Gnome

There's several distributions which have reached or passed that version
number: Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE. You'll need to say which one because..

> After many, many hours of trying things, and installing rpms, I discovered
> that the only time it actually works is when the CD-ROM drive is mounted -
> there doesn't need to be a CD in the drive. I suspect it might be something
> with the automount, but I turned it off during the boot process (I just
...

I think the different distros have different ways of dealing with 
automounting CDs. On Red Hat, the package is magicdev. rpm -e magicdev
will remove it (you won't get the icons popping up when you shove CDs
in the drive automatically, obviously, if you do that). 

I don't know what other distros use these days.

> so all I have done to make it work every time I start the computer is put a
> line in the rc.local that mounts the cdrom drive. It does the trick but I'm
> still  curious as to what's happening, and thought there might be a patch
> available.
> 
> Has anyone had a similar problem and knows what's going on?

I've never had it but I've seen similar problems mentioned. My
non-technical understanding is that for an automount program to
work, it has to poll the drive continuously to see whether anything
has changed. And that some drives may not like it, or some kernels
may do it wrong, or "something like that". 

Best I can do. Sorry :)

Telsa