Problem with the Gnome display manager (gdm)

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#1

Hi All,

I recently ran into an error. I’m currently running SuSE linux enterprise server, but I was hoping that maybe someone here could help me out.

I’m not exactly a new user of Linux, but I’m no means an expert either. I recently installed apache and mysql on our Suse Enterprise linux server. After logging out (via VNC, which I’ve been using for months to access this server) and back in again, the gui login no longer appears. I can still ssh into the server, and the samba file share is still available (though I’m getting errors in the logs about the samba share as well), but in general the server appears to be working except for the gui login. Below is an excerpt of the “warn” log in /var/log when the problem began. I disabled the apache server, but this error doesn’t appear to be related (on or off, gdm is messed up)

http://snipt.org/YoU

for some system info mainly culled from the /proc directory, and trimmed (i.e. only one processor though there are two quad core intel processors each with two logical cores per physical core) see here:

system info - 161fd

I’ve also tried several troubleshooting shooting steps, I’ve changed the display manager to “kdm” (though it appears kdm is not installed, as when I use it, and go to a server terminal it comes up with the x windows login). The steps I used to do this were:

rcxdm stop
(edit /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager to use “kdm” instead of “gdm”)
SuSEconfig
rcxdm start

If I’m at the server terminal (i.e. not through vnc) the x windows login shows up fine, and no errors pop up in /var/messages (which it does if I’m using gdm). However, as soon as I enter my username/pass for the server, I get two popup errors:

The panel has encountered a fatal error.
The panel could not register with the bonobo activation server (error code:3) and will exit. It may be automatically restarted.

Nautilus cannot be used now due to an unexpected error from bonobo when attempting to register the file manager view server.

And several errors in the /var/messages log:
errors for gdm problem - b165d

Anyone have any ideas? Or requests for additional info etc?

Thanks!
~josh

#2

Not sure if it’s related. But gdm doesn’t seem to support xdmcp under openSUSE at all. I don’t know why. Any attempt to log in remotely with an X -query failed for me on openSUSE while running gdm on the X server. I’ve been double and triplechecking the gdm configuration. It’s the same I use on other Linux distros and some Unix and it works there. Apparently gdm doesn’t like remote access.

Have you tried xdm ? It should be installed already.
To install kdm, just : zypper in kdm.
But it might install a bunch of KDE stuff as dependencies.

#3

Hmm, that’s strange… I’ve been using gdm for a while with a vnc login. I had to mess around a bit with the config files to get the correct screen dimensions, etc. but it has worked fine for me for months. Until recently anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

xdm is installed, and if I use it to try to login from the physical server terminal (i.e. not vnc) then the login window pops up fine. However, after I put in the login and pass word I get two errors that pop up:

The panel has encountered a fatal error.
The panel could not register with the bonobo activation server (error code:3) and will exit. It may be automatically restarted.

Nautilus cannot be used now due to an unexpected error from bonobo when attempting to register the file manager view server.

Each is in its own screen. As soon as those error messages pop up, the display returns to the same background I see when using the gdm to login, and the login window disappears, leaving nothing but the background. The error messages in the log from around when I did this are:
errors for gdm problem - b165d

I’m installing kdm right now

#4

Well, I tried the zypper kdm installation, seems to work fine until I get this error:

Installing: shared-mime-info-0.60-2.2 [error]
Installation of shared-mime-info-0.60-2.2 failed:
(with --nodeps --force) Error: Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.93909: line 1: 12509 Segmentation fault usr/bin/update-mime-database usr/share/mime > /dev/null
error: %post(shared-mime-info-0.60-2.2.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 139

Abort, retry, ignore? [A/r/i]:

Retrying just gives the same error :frowning:

Are all these problems together indicative of some hardware problem?

~josh

#5

As an update to this thread, I found out why there were seg faults. Once I updated zlib and libxml2 segmentation faults discontinued. See this for more details of how epically messed up everything got: Gui login no longer appears