Description of problem: This was a fun night. After an upgrade and installation of a tool that happens to print something to the screen - perhaps a w list - when root logs in, it was found that gdm seems to die. Symptom: 'x' in inittab loops. It can't start, you see, because something in the fact that there's output in root's .bashrc or any /etc/profile.d script causes gdm to totally barf. Nah, I couldn't strace -p 1. I stumbled on the solution almost accidentally, and stopped fixing at some ungodly hour when it stopped being broken. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): gdm-2.4.4.5-1.2 How reproducible: All bleegin' night. Steps to Reproduce: 1. toss an echo into root's .bashrc 2. init 3 3. init 5 Actual results: 'x' starts looping because gdm shuts down and cannot start up. The monitor doesn't even give the familiar click when X starts up; it just whines to the console about 'x restarting too fast' and that's all the clue one gets. Expected results: gdm should still be able to start. In fact, it should laugh at the pathetic mumblings of start scripts. It's *X*, after all, so big it doesn't need any more letters in its name. It doesn't bow to the whim of some muttering of a .bashrc. Additional info: It was late. My box may be made available to qualifying RHi/Fedora people for poking, thanks to the magic of ssh, faked port-forwarding via iptables and ssh2 keys - of which I'll be needing one.
Fedora Core 1 is now maintained by the Fedora Legacy project for security updates only. If this problem is a security issue, please reopen and reassign to the Fedora Legacy product. If it is not a security issue and hasn't been resolved in the current FC3 updates or in the FC4 test release, reopen and change the version to match.