I am new with openSUSE and I installed v 12.3 on a VMware virtual machine. I have a problem with the **Gnome and Metacity **desktop environments.
During installation I selected all the packages and dependencies for desktop environments, so I think it is not a missing dependencies problem.
I have installed VMware tools installed inside the VM and enabled Accelerate 3D graphics.
The OpenGL renderer is listed as Gallium 0.4 on SVGA3D.
When I select either Gnome or Metacity from the login screen, all I get is a blank desktop with no panels, no icons, nothing! All there is (apart from the default desktop openSUSE wallpaper) is a cursor which moves as I move the mouse, but no reaction to either left- or right-clicking. However all the other desktop environments load properly with no problem whatsoever. I tried loading Recovery Mode but no success there neither.
Does anyone else using 12.3 on VMware Workstation 9 face this same problem? Any ideas on how I can go about to solve it?
Thanks.
> Does anyone else using 12.3 on VMware Workstation 9 face this same
> problem? Any ideas on how I can go about to solve it?
> Thanks.
Did you check the install media before you started? Always a good idea.
I’ve caught corrupted downloads numerous times. It can lead to all sorts
of weirdness even though it seems to install.
I wan’t sure what metacity was, so did a search on it. It’s not a Desktop, it’s a Window Manager.
Is there some reason why you prefer that and not just install Gnome with its own default Window Manager?
If you don’t have a valid answer for that, then I recommend you re-install (force update) your Gnome Desktop while removing metacity.
Better yet, if this is a new VM you’re building, just start from scratch and choose the Gnome Desktop (and little else, especially do not choose metacity).
As I explained in my initial post, I during installation I selected everything listed under the category Workstation. This installed all the desktop environments so on the login interface I get the following desktop environments in the drop-down combobox which I can select to launch a session:
Default
Custom
FVWM
GNOME
IceWM
KDE Plasma Workspace
KDE Plasma Workspace (failsafe session)
LXDE
Metacity
Openbox
TWM
WindowMaker
Xfce Session
Failsafe
I took the following screenshot of the login window:
During the initial installation of openSUSE 12.3 I selected and installed all the window managers, all the desktop environments and all their pre-requisites.
***Is there any configuration I can do to get GNOME to launch properly??
**
*
I don’t know anyone else who has attempted to install <all> desktop and windows managers, although it might be an interesting thing to do.
So, I wouldn’t have personal experience with your situation but I can recommend a possible/probable solution…
From your login screen and assuming that you have a working network connection to the Internet, update your system as follows
zypper up
What this will do is to replace/update all the original components which were released many months ago with the current latest stable. Also, if any bugs and issues had been discovered after the original launch, presumably those should be included as well.
Since you selected so many components, I’d assume your update will take a very long time, even with a fairly fast Internet connection, I’d speculate that the download might be somewhere at least 3GB. Also, expanded will take a large amount of disk space, I’d also speculate you might need maybe 25GB of free space(in the VM, plus the Host), maybe a lot more.
If this doesn’t seem very palatable, I’d recommend you instead build VMs with a single Desktop, when you want to experiment with another Desktop, just build another VM. If you do this, then building and maintaining each VM would be much easier. This is the new mindset working with virtualization instead of bare metal. Since you can only build one or a few(multi-boot) on bare metal, the tendency is to build big. But, since VMs are so disposable and can run on varied storage (eg attached external drives), you can build many small VMs instead and each one would be much less complex and function better since they are more “purposeful.”
On 2013-08-13 18:36, tsu2 wrote:
>
> I don’t know anyone else who has attempted to install <all> desktop and
> windows managers, although it might be an interesting thing to do.
I have a lot, but I’m unsure I have “all”. I’m not even sure all work.
What I know is that gnome has the default config on any new user.
I do have metacity installed, for instance. That does not mean gnome
uses it, unless you tell it to.
Gnome on a VM may not render well, it is very demanding in graphics
capabilities. May default to… whats its name, not failsafe… :-?
> Also,
> expanded will take a large amount of disk space, I’d also speculate you
> might need maybe 25GB of free space(in the VM, plus the Host), maybe a
> lot more.
About that, yes
On virtual machines I usually install a smallish desktop only. XFCE or LXDE.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Thanks a lot for all your help, TSU and Carlos. I have learned a lot these past few weeks.
Ok, I realised my error in calling Metacity a desktop, and found out it is rather a window manager which is listed with the packages under GNOME. I got thinking my GNOME was probably using this window manager when launched because selecting “Metacity” from the login screen (first picture above) had exactly the same effect as selecting GNOME (second screen shot above).
I decided to delete (or uninstall) Metacity with the hope that GNOME will revert to its default window manager but I got no different result. Therefore, my next question is:
What is the default window manager for GNOME called, and can I install it as a seperate rpm package?
Is there a way of configuring GNOME (from a different desktop) to use its default window manager?
AFAIK metacity is Gnome’s default window manager. (at least it was in Gnome2)
But how did you uninstall it? You should have got dependency errors:
# rpm -e --test metacity
error: Failed dependencies:
metacity is needed by (installed) metacity-themes-0.1-776.1.1.noarch
metacity = 2.34.13 is needed by (installed) metacity-lang-2.34.13-2.1.2.noarch
metacity is needed by (installed) gdm-3.6.2-4.2.1.x86_64
metacity is needed by (installed) gnome-session-fallback-session-3.6.2-2.2.1.x86_64
Ah well, you don’t use gdm, but kdm…
I would suggest you switch to gdm and use Gnome’s fallback session. (kdm doesn’t list that for some reason)
robin_listas;2579758 Wrote:
> On 2013-08-13 18:36, tsu2 wrote:
> >
> > I don’t know anyone else who has attempted to install <all> desktop
> and
> > windows managers, although it might be an interesting thing to do.
>
> I have a lot, but I’m unsure I have “all”. I’m not even sure all work.
> What I know is that gnome has the default config on any new user.
>
> I do have metacity installed, for instance. That does not mean gnome
> uses it, unless you tell it to.
>
> Gnome on a VM may not render well, it is very demanding in graphics
> capabilities. May default to… whats its name, not failsafe… :-?
>
>
> > Also,
> > expanded will take a large amount of disk space, I’d also speculate
> you
> > might need maybe 25GB of free space(in the VM, plus the Host), maybe
> a
> > lot more.
>
> About that, yes
>
> On virtual machines I usually install a smallish desktop only. XFCE or
> LXDE.
>
> –
> Cheers / Saludos,
>
> Carlos E. R.
> (from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Thanks a lot for all your help, TSU and Carlos. I have learned a lot
these past few weeks.
Ok, I realised my error in calling Metacity a desktop, and found out it
is rather a window manager which is listed with the packages under
GNOME. I got thinking my GNOME was probably using this window manager
when launched because selecting “Metacity” from the login screen (first
picture above) had exactly the same effect as selecting GNOME (second
screen shot above).
I decided to delete (or uninstall) Metacity with the hope that GNOME
will revert to its default window manager but I got no different result.
Therefore, my next question is:
What is the default window manager for GNOME called, and can I
install it as a seperate rpm package?
Is there a way of configuring GNOME (from a different desktop) to use
its default window manager?
Thanks again for your help.
Hi
For the Gnome shell it’s Mutter which is based on Clutter which is a
fork of Metacity… whew…
It’s possibly a Mesa issue… have you considered upgrading to the
3.8.3 branch?
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) Kernel 3.7.10-1.16-desktop
up 18:15, 3 users, load average: 0.15, 0.14, 0.11
CPU AMD E2-1800@1.70GHz | GPU Radeon HD 7340
Not knowing the purpose of those packages, I decided to “break … by ignoring the dependencies” (as shown in the second screenshot).
So, if I understand your suggestion what I do now is install the “metacity” back. Then configure the login manager to gdm instead of kdm (ok, this I can do from within KDE).
I’ll try this and see what happens…
Yes.
I don’t use Gnome myself, but Gnome shell apparently needs OpenGL support to work.
And according to malcolmlewis it uses mutter as window manager. (I did think it uses clutter but didn’t find this package on my system, so didn’t mention it… )
But 3.6 still has the “fallback session” which should use metacity according to the dependencies, and thus should work in your VM I think.
You would have to select that on the gdm login screen then before you login. (it should be called “GNOME fallback”)
Thanks for all your help. I restored the metacity package and configured gdm for the login manager. Unfortunately, when I restarted I still got the same blank screen as when you log in to GNOME. Exactly the same blank screen as the screen shot I posted earlier. I don’t know, does this mean neither mutter nor metacity window manager works on my VM? I don’t know what to think anymore!
This is one idea I never thought of trying. I guess by 3.8.3 branch you mean kernel? If it is truly a kernel you’re suggesting I would be happy to try it but I would like to know whether there’s a means of upgrading a kernel offline. I don’t have the sort of direct Internet access to perform a live kernel update. Is there some way of downloading a “kernel file”, then installing offline?
wolfi323;2580730 Wrote:
> Yes.
> I don’t use Gnome myself, but Gnome shell apparently needs OpenGL
> support to work.
> And according to malcolmlewis it uses mutter as window manager. (I did
> think it uses clutter but didn’t find this package on my system, so
> didn’t mention it… )
>
> But 3.6 still has the “fallback session” which should use metacity
> according to the dependencies, and thus should work in your VM I
> think. You would have to select that on the gdm login screen then
> before you login. (it should be called “GNOME fallback”)
Thanks for all your help. I restored the metacity package and
configured gdm for the login manager. Unfortunately, when I restarted I
still got the same blank screen as when you log in to GNOME. Exactly the
same blank screen as the screen shot I posted earlier. I don’t know,
does this mean neither mutter nor metacity window manager works on my
VM? I don’t know what to think anymore!
malcolmlewis Wrote:
>
> It’s possibly a Mesa issue… have you considered upgrading to the
> 3.8.3 branch?
This is one idea I never thought of trying. I guess by 3.8.3 branch you
mean kernel? If it is truly a kernel you’re suggesting I would be happy
to try it but I would like to know whether there’s a means of upgrading
a kernel offline. I don’t have the sort of direct Internet access to
perform a live kernel update. Is there some way of downloading a “kernel
file”, then installing offline?
Yes, I did install VMware Tools on the VM running oS.
Regarding Gnome 3.8.3 I still have the same problem with online installation. It would be great for me if there was some sort of 3.8.3 RPM file which I can download seperately first then install offline on the system.
malcolmlewis;2580981 Wrote:
> Hi
> No, I meant Gnome to 3.8.3
> ‘GNOME 3.8 for openSUSE 12.3 – GO GET IT @ Dominique a.k.a.
> DimStar (Dim*)’ (http://tinyurl.com/cmxgytv)
>
> So are all the vmware add-on drivers installed in your VM?
>
Yes, I did install VMware Tools on the VM running oS.
Regarding Gnome 3.8.3 I still have the same problem with online
installation. It would be great for me if there was some sort of 3.8.3
RPM file which I can download seperately first then install offline on
the system.
Hi
You would need to use something like rsync to mirror the repository
locally to make sure you grab the noarch and your system arch files.
Then put all the files in one directory and use YaST software
repositories to create a ‘plain’ rpm repository. From that you could
then zypper dup from.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) Kernel 3.7.10-1.16-desktop
up 14:25, 3 users, load average: 0.33, 0.19, 0.20
CPU AMD E2-1800@1.70GHz | GPU Radeon HD 7340
Thanks, but all that you said is all Greek to me :shame:. I’m a newbie and your last explanation was like rocket science. Can you, please, take it over again in simpler terms? A step-by-step procedure will be very much appreciated on how I can use rsync to “mirror the repository locally”, “grab the noarch and system arch files” (BTW my system is 64bit arch), and also how to “create a plain rpm repository” and then “zypper dup from”… phew … (did I really just say all that? )
malcolmlewis;2581009 Wrote:
> Hi
> So what is the host system your running, or the operating system on
> the machine you will download to?
>
> How do you propose to copy the files to/in to the VM?
Hi
I am running a Win 7 host. I can copy/paste between host and VM with
VMware Tools I have installed.
Thanks
Hi
OK, then download and install winscp and can use ftp to grab the files;
You only need to drag/drop/copy the two folders noarch and x86_64. Once
that’s done and all copied to the hosts system then you need to create
a folder on the VM somewhere say called GNOME and all the rpm’s from
both of the above directories can be copied to the folder called GNOME.
Question, why not enable the networking for a short time and download
from the VM?
Once the above is done, post back and will go over the final steps…
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.3 (x86_64) Kernel 3.7.10-1.16-desktop
up 18:15, 3 users, load average: 0.68, 0.57, 0.40
CPU AMD E2-1800@1.70GHz | GPU Radeon HD 7340
)