Redhat 8 the hard way... adding GNOME afterwards

[scottprive at earthlink.net (Scott Prive)]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek Martin" <blu at sophic.org>
To: <discuss at blu.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2003 11:38 PM
Subject: Re: Redhat 8 the hard way... adding GNOME afterwards


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> On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 11:20:21PM -0500, Scott Prive wrote:
> > Then I manually added X11 and gnome rpms. I can start X, and run apps
from
> > the basic xterm. Also, I can ssh -X in and run windowed apps remotely,
> > including nautilus. gdm starts up automatically and I can login fine.
> >
> > The problem is I can't get my logins to default to GNOME.
>
> How are you starting X?

Tried both
1) startx from a boot to init3
2) using gdm


>
> > If I type `switchdesk gnome`, switchdesk claims GNOME is not installed.
>
> If you just run switchdesk with no command-line options from within an
> X session, what happens?

Hmm.. running 'switchdesk' from a local xterm gives me the same GUI and
behavior I saw when running switchdesk-gnome. As before, the radio button is
defaulted to first item in the list, GNOME. The GUI accepts my "OK" and a
messagebox follows that indicates my settings were successful.

When the GUI exits, the STDOUT left in the xterm clearly states "GNOME not
installed". Nice error checking, whoever wrote that. ;-)

>
> > (again, not looking for places to hack my config files... I can do this.
I'm
> > assuming that I am missing a package, which for some reason isn't
declared
> > as a dependency anywhere...)
>
> Yeah, but that may not be a valid assumption.  The switchdesk program
> (theoretically) works by modifying your .Xclients and/or
> .Xclients-default file(s).  Have a look at those files.  It may be
> doing the wrong thing, or doing nothing at all...  Or, it's possible
> that whatever method you're using to start X may be ignoring that
> file (either by design, or because it can't read it, or something like
> that).  You might also check the permissions on the .Xclient* files,
> if they exist.

The .Xclient files don't exist, so it's falling back on a system default
somewhere. I'll look into it more.

>
> FWIW, in my experience if you know how to accomplish the task on the
> command line, it's rarely worth bothering with the GUIs since they're
> as likely to screw it up as not.  And mucking with the files directly
> is usually also faster.

Yep, that's how I started out on this box. I'm realizing if I want to use
Red Hat "off the beaten path", it's going to cause me trouble and I should
probably switch to Debian or Gentoo.

The irony here is I installed X11 because "STAF", a QA testing tool,
installs using InstallshieldJava (dumb, because once it's installed it runs
without X fine!). I figure I already dirtied my system with X, so a little
GNOME won't hurt. :-)

>
> - --
> Derek D. Martin
> http://www.pizzashack.org/
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