Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 21618
Update from 6.2->7.0: X login doesn't work anymore
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:59 EDT
I had a RedHat 6.2 with Helixcode gnome on it. I upgraded to RedHat 7.0 Now, the graphical login doesn't work anymore. It accepts the login, it accepts the password. Apparently it validates it, because if I try a wrong password it says so immediately. Then the login screen goes black, and then just reappears, as if nothing had happened. Text login still functions correctly, though. I thought it was related to bug: 11323, so I tried to change the "x:5:respawn" to "x:5:once" in inittab, but to no avail. I looked at /var/log/messages: here's the printout when logging in with user michel: Dec 2 14:48:32 orac PAM_unix[937]: (system-auth) session opened for user michel by (uid=0) Dec 2 14:48:33 orac gdm[937]: gdm_slave_session_start: michel on :0 Dec 2 14:48:33 orac PAM_unix[937]: (system-auth) session closed for user michel Dec 2 14:48:33 orac gdm[937]: gdm_auth_user_remove: /home/michel is not owned by uid 0. Dec 2 14:48:33 orac gdm[937]: gdm_auth_user_remove: Ignoring suspiciously looking cookie file /home/michel/.Xauthority Can anybody help me, because I need my graphical workstation?
My guess is that some Helix package is still installed, colliding with the Red Hat setup, or that a Helix package did something it shouldn't have that interfered with the upgrade. In general we only support upgrades from Red Hat packages though; there are just far too many versions of the Helix packages and their packages do not follow our packaging guidelines. There is no way we can reproduce or QA problems with the Helix packages. As a solution, I would recommend looking for Helix packages (rpm -qa | grep helix) and replacing them with the Red Hat packages if you find them; that may work. Or you could install the Helix 7.0 packages (though keep in mind, the same problem will exist on upgrade to future Red Hat versions).
I have the same problem on my system. I updated from 6.1 -> 7.0, and my symptoms match exactly what Michel describes. The graphical login is broken. However, the window manager still works if you have logged in at a text prompt. I searched for Helix code as recommended by hp, but it seems that I don't have any in my RPM database. Until I find the solution, I am using the following work around: 1. Use Linuxconf to set your boot mode to "text". 2. Reboot. 3. Log in at the text prompt. 4. Run "startx".
I found the solution to my problem. Turns out that I had some files missing from my /etc/X11 directory, and that some shell scripts did not have executable permissions. The following were missing: /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions/Default /etc/X11/gdm/Init/Default The following shell scripts did not have the executable permission set: /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 and Xsession How did this happen? Not sure. The 7.0 installer died a few times, so that could have done it, but it died during other installs on other machines, and the problem did not happen there (so I could just be lucky). What helped me debug this problem somewhat was to enable Gnome debug messages: Edit /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf, [debug] section. Change "Enabled" to 1 (the default is 0). Log output goes to /var/log/messages.