Newbie: GTK: cannot open display in FreeBSD

[derik DeVecchio <derik pobox com>]

History
------------
    I learned to compile and assemble many years before GUI was a valid
acronym.  I am comfortable with a command line interface, but I haven't
had the need (or desire) to use one for at least 10 years, and my
experience on Unix based OS's is negligible. 
    I tried Mandrake 9.1 on the advice of a friend.  It installed
smoothly, and I began to think you didn't need to be a geek to use one o
of these system.  I was wrong.  I spent a week teaching myself how to
download, compile, make and configure (configuring was the really hard
part) both Apache and qmail in order to host half a dozen different
domain names in a complex configuration.  It worked, but I began to get
the impression that I might be better off with a variant of BSD.

Installation of FreeBSD
-------------------------
I choose FreeBSD because it seemed to have the broadest base.  I had to
install FreeBSD at least 3 times before I got a configuration that would
boot.  That was a bummer.  But not as big a bummer is not being able to
get Gnome working.  I have installed FreeBSD 3 more times with different
settings, and reconfigured the last install as many ways as I know how,
but gnome (actually it is GTK that is failing) will not load.
Fortunately for me I know that aren't always this hard in Unix.  Or did
I just get lucky with Mandrake?

The Error
------------------------
First, Gnome doesn't load at start up. I don't know if this is causing
the problem or not, but I figured I would mention it.  I have to log on
at a command prompt and then start gnome afterwards.  Unfortunately it
took me an  hour to figure out how to start Gnome.  (perhaps a link to
'gnome-session' to just 'gnome' would be a good idea)

After I log in I type: 
  gnome-session

and immediately I get an error that says
  (gnome-session:N): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

I get no advice on what it means by "display' or where to go for help,
and most importantly, Gnome doesn't load.   Eventually I found this
mailing list.  I searched the archive but it seemed to be primarily
concerned with people developing software.  I am not doing anything that
complicated.  I can't even get stock software to work!


If there is any more information that I should have provided, please
feel free to ask me for it.  As I said, my experience with Unix is
trivial and I have no idea what I am really doing.  Just fumbling in the
dark mostly.  And I really am new at the Unix thing.  If you want to
know the value of a certain variable or file, it would help if you could
tell me where to find it (etc.).


Well, I guess that is it. TIA.





  




derik      
 
                     email:  derik pobox com

                     WWW:    http://www.pobox.com/~derik