Problems when booting up...

[Derek Broughton]

Larry Shields wrote:

> Well what I want it too do it to start up as it all ways did when it was
> first installed...
> Showing the bar loading, then it switches to a screen with a light brown
> in color with a small rectangular box for loging in..

OK, that's gdm.

> But now what it does is show the loading bar, but it never finishes
> loading, then it switches me to a back screen with a log in
> prompt...From that point I log in, then I have too use startx to bring
> up my desktop...So I suppose it is GDM that I am looking for...

Right.

> So what 
> is the appropriate package that I am missing...??? Plus why would it be
> missing since it has all ways worked prior to this problem, I can not
> see what has been changed, or remove and why...

I would guess it's not missing, it's broken.
> 
> I looked in my /var/log dir., but did not see a *dm.log file, so what
> may I ask is *dm, do you mean the dmesg.gz log's...???

No, I'm a KDE type, so I was just trusting that gdm used the same log naming
convention.

So first, look in /etc/rc2.d/

# ls -l /etc/rc2.d/S*gdm

If gdm is installed, that should show a link to /etc/init.d/gdm.  Of course,
if either of those is not there, we know the problem and you can use:

# sudo aptitude reinstall gdm

Assuming gdm _is_ installed, then try:

# sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

Then I trust somebody can tell you where gdm has put the log. :-)
-- 
derek