Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 108986
updated coreutils, now cannot login through gdm
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:59:06 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Description of problem: I just ran up2date today (November 3, 2003), and updated the coreutils and cups packages that were available (everything else is up to date). I had to reboot the machine, and now, gdm doesn't start: I never get the greeter screen, just a spinning hourglass. Also, I can hear the processor fan spinning up to maximum speed, so it sounds like the processor is working at max load. I didn't change any settings, or anything else, all I did was update the coreutils package. Please help! I can't login graphically and cannot get any work done! I can login in text mode (Alt-F1), but it's very awkward and most of my work is graphics-based, so you can see how this is a serious problem. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.update coreutils and cups 2.reboot 3. Actual Results: gdm just sat there, doing nothing. the little hourglass mosue cursor spun in the middle of the screen, and the processor (fan) sounded like it went up to full speed! Expected Results: the graphical greeter was supposed to appear. Additional info: not much else to say. I haven't made any other changes to my system's configuration in a while. nothing seriously customized, no custom kernel (kernel is 2.4.20-20.9, also got it from up2date!)
When the hourglass is spinning and the fan is whirring, what does 'ps axf' say when you run it from a text console?
Created attachment 95719 [details] output from ps axf output from "ps axf"
It's gdmlogin burning up the CPU cycles here. Reassigning.
here's some additional info, I've been experimenting... when I change my /etc/prefdm file to use kdm instead of gdm, i get what looks like the same problem. When I use xdm, I actually get the the greeter stage of the login. When I attempt to login, I get an "OUT OF RANGE" message on my screen. Should also note that when I try to get to the text login from the dead gdm scree, the screen often goes completely dark, and I am forced to reboot. I am not always able to succesfully switch to a text-login. Not sure why. Hope this info helps, as I need my GUI back, and soon!
OK i've been tinkering all night... I still can't get gdm or kdm to work. they just hang... still! I have gotten xdm working to the point that it will run xsm, and from xsm i can get into failsafe mode. I can't load the kde session from xsm, all it gives me is a screen with some junk in the corner (something about shutting down with checkpoint, and some other session logs and options that seem to be useless... knwo what I'm talking about?), and I can't leave xsm or I risk having my monitor go black on me again (not always does it do this, but often enough it's annoying as hell!). Even when I'm in failsafe mode, I can't start kde. Is there any way to "downgrade" my packages? off the installation CD's perhaps? something in the recent coreutils or cups updates really messed things up here and I'm starting to get desperate... I may just back everything up and go for a full reinstall if I can't get it working in the next day or two :( :( :(
To downgrade a package use rpm -Uvh --oldpackage <pkgfile>. If you could try that one package at a time until the problem goes away it would be useful to know which one triggers it.
Ok I downgraded all Cups and coreutils packages to the versions on my install cd's (cd's came with book "RedHat Linux 9 Bible; Negus, Chrisopher; Wiley Publishing, Inc.), and removed a cups devel package that wasn't on the original cd (this book came with 3 cd's BTW, not the usual 2)...or did you mean downgrade EVERY package that's installed? And gdm is STILL dead and hanging! would any log files help? if so, which ones?
I took the easy way out. :( backed my home directory and all other vital files to CD, and reinstalled the system. Ran up2date on ALMOST everything (I left out Samba packages because I don't network with Win* computers, and CUPs-devel because I have no plans to write printer drivers) and everything is going fine! :) The intallation I performed this tine was a bit more streamlined than my original, I left out a number of packages. Sorry I couldn't try to spend more time debugging, but I just didn't have the time/patience. I know re-intalling may not be a solution for all, but it cleared up a number of bugs for me, this one and some annoying Kde bugs as well. If anyone else gets this, I hope they have better luck debugging than I.
It look to me you had the same problem as I have. gdm does hangs when run in init 5. I have switched to init 3 and am running startx instead. This give me a lot error messages. I have managed to start gnome-terminal, but most gnome-applications will crash. You can see my bug-report on http://bugzilla.ximian.com Bug#51338 for more details. I have figured out that it is not a gnome fault. Reinstalling gnome have no positive effect. All Redhat applications which are dealing with pnd and xpm immages will crash!
Complete link to Bug#51338: http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=51338
It doesn't sound too much like mine... I never tried starting in init 3 though, so I don't know what would have happened. Your version of redhat is also older than mine. I also do not have StarOffice, but OpenOffice instead. I hardly use gnome, and was never able to properly start either session. I had to use xdm to log in with failsafe mode, then I could use apps like nedit... attempting to start gnome-session or kdestart from failsafe mode did nothing (IIRC). I never noticed a problem with xpm or png files, and I don't think there was one, because the xdm login display has a logo that is probably in one of those two formats. Like I said, I logged in in text mode, backed up all of the files that I had to onto a CD, then reformatted and reinstalled everything, FROM SCRATCH. I hope you have better luck than I did!! (and if you do track it down, and it was related to my bug, would you let me know? I'd like to know what really happened there)