Re: Newbie: GTK: cannot open display in FreeBSD

[James Drabb <JDrabb tampabay rr com>]

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003 19:26:14 -0400
derik DeVecchio <derik pobox com> wrote:

<snip> 
> After I log in I type: 
>   gnome-session
> 
> and immediately I get an error that says
>   (gnome-session:N): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
> 
> 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      


Maybe a distro similar to Red Hat 8 or 9 would be
best until you become more familiar with Linux?
Anyway, you cannot just run gnome-session.  You
need to run X and then have gnome-session start.
In your home directory create a file named
.xinitrc and in the file put this line:

exec /path/to/gnome-session

To find where  gnome-session is, you can do
which gnome-session.  Now you should be able to
run startx and have X start and then load gnome-session.

Jim Drabb
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Those who would sacrifice freedom for security will get neither
---------------------------------------------------------------
James Drabb JR
Programmer Analyst
Davenport, FL USA
JDrabb at tampabay dot rr dot com