Steps to Reproduce: 0.rpm -e gettext 1.Be an total idiot 2.Set your mouse type to "sun" 3.Try to start X again Description of problem: After a few attempts, XKeepsFailing kicks in. It doesn't run redhat-config-xfree86, although it seems to be supposed to. Anyway, then it displays a dialog (using gdialog), that is completely empty (1) except for something unreadable at the bottom, which is probably supposed to be a button. (2) I can navigate through a few dialogs, but I don't see any text and the buttons are unreadable. 1) Looking at the script, it invokes 'gettext -s', but gdm doesn't require gettext. The scripts seems to attempt to avoid bash-isms, but here a bashism would be useful the $" " way of getting translations. Anyway, the current version attempts to run gettext and gets empty strings in return. So either gettext should be required, or the script needs fixing. 2) runnig gdialog when logged in in text mode produces correctly looking buttons though. A theory (not checked at all), is that when nobody is logged in on a VT, it is in a "default" state which doesn't have UTF-8 support enabled, the support is enabled after logging in. This can be verified by setting your keyboard via e.g. loadkeys -u cz-lat2. Then you should be able to produce &ecaron, &scaron, &ccaron by pressing AltGr-{2,3,4} when logged in a VT. When not logged in, these keys produce UTF-8 garbage. So, possibly the dialogs are run on a VT that has UTF-8 disabled. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): gdm-2.4.1.1-1
After changing screens from a CRT (1280x1024) to an SGI 1600SW (1600x1024) (hooray for ebay) I got something simialr - the gdm screen was blank, but the mouse pointer was there. I didn't see any garbage at the bottom, though. I changed resoultions to 800x600 and progressed bac to 1600x1024 and the problem seem to have resolved itself.
Philip: if you saw a (graphic) mouse pointer and nothing more, it is a different problem. I was talking about an empty dialog, i.e. a cyan rectangle with some "garbage buttons" at the bottom. And in text mode.
Probably some UTF-8 mess
In severn, the dialogs are quite readable. None of dialog, gdialog and whiptail are able to display perfect dialog windows in UTF-8, but that's for separate bug reports. Still unfixed is the missing dependency of gdm on /bin/gettext.
In upstream 2.4.1.5 the dependency is fixed by just not using gettext if it isn't found. In the devel version I have a separate utility to do translations rather then rely on gettext. This can be fixed in older versions by just taking the XKeepsFailing script from the 2.4.1.5 version.
We upgraded to the gnome 2.4 gdm, so I assume (since george said so) that this is fixed now.