I’m experiencing a gnome-session issue on SLED-11, which is based on OpenSUSE 11, therefore I’m posting my question here.
When I log in normally (GNOME) there is no gnome-panel and the desktop icons are also missing; I only get the backgroud image and the pointer, which is responsive to mouse movements. From here on I can only reboot, nothing else seems to work (keybord, right-click, CTRl-ALT-Backspace, CTRL-ALT-F1, ALT-F2). I suppose the window manager runs but gnome-session does not.
If I login using the x11failsafe option then everything is as expected (panel, menus, etc.) but, of course, graphics resolution is limited.
On the other hand, everything is fine when choosing IceWM or TWM instead of GNOME, so I think the graphics driver (on-board Intel 845) is not the problem.
I’m not a Gnome user, but could it be a window manager issue related to desktop effects you have set up in gnome? Such effects would likely be disabled in Failsafe hence the differing result.
Try a Failsafe login, create a new user (you can delete it later). Reboot and log back in with the new user under Gnome (not failsafe of course). Report back if this works and we can go from there.
Thank you for the quick response, caf4926, will do as you suggested and will report back here.
I should have mentioned that I have just instaled the system, so I am using the default settings, and also that I experience the exact same problem as root unless I start the system using the x11failsafe option.
I created a new user and tried to log in, that didn’t fix the problem.
Then I logged in in console mode (runlevel 3), without the x11failsafe option, and reconfigured the display using Sax2. Everyting went fine, 1280x1024 @ 85 Hz mode was detected and set.
But upon issuing “startx” or “startx gnome-session” at the command prompt all I get is a black screen with a few lines of grey dots at the top, which dissapear after a while. The only way to continue is to reboot. So basically I am back to square one.
Any ideas as to what may be wrong? Again, I can log in successfully if I choose TWM if IceWM instead of Gnome. Thanks.
I had a look a a fresh Xorg.0.log file and the last line reads:
intel_bufmgr_fake.c:392: Error waiting for fence: Device or resource busy.
Then I googled up this error message and it turned out it’s “Bug 434767: Xorg crashes with I845 driver” reported on 13 Oct 2008. The workaround seems to be a NoAccel option in the Device section; the fix (as per post https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=473809 from 2009-02-01) seems to involve rebuilding the libdrm module and xf86-video-intel from the freedesktop.org git repository.
There are reports on the Web indicating that the bug has been fixed in xorg-x11-server-7.4-17.4.1 but I checked and I have xorg-x11-server-7.4-26.2 and the bug is till there. I will try the NoAccel thing; if it fails I will report back here.
to the Device section of file /etx/X11/xorg.conf and now I get a gray screen instead of the background image but still no gnome-panel. I can also restart the X server with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE.
Notice the lines that are commented out and the new entry, AccelMethod. I suppose it disables acceleration, which would explain the decreased performance.