Kdm problem at boot

[James Richard Tyrer]

Shawn P. Garbett wrote:

 > I'm getting closer to figuring this out.

Glad to hear that since I really don't know what the problem is.

 > Just fought a battle with filesystem corruption due to a block that
 > went bad. Guess where the bad block was-- right in the middle of the
 > kde setup files.
 >
 > The other thing to note, is that it works if I start kdm as root.

KDM must be run as root.  Do you mean that you logon to the console as 
root and then execute: "kdm"?

That would mean that the problem is with what ever "/etc/inittab" 
directs execution to to start the X server.

Check the last two lines.  My file says:

# Run Xstart in runlevel 5
x:5:once:/etc/X11/Xstart

But yours will be different.  This directs: "init" (which is the program 
that starts the system after it boots) to run the script: "/etc/X11/Xstart".

My: "Xstart" script is rather simple:

-------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash
#
exec /usr/kde3/bin/kdm -nodaemon
-------------------------------------------------------

Since I always use KDM.

Your distro will have a much more complicated script possibly called: 
"prefdm".

You can change your system as above and see if it works

 > During boot, what user is running the init.d scripts? If it's not
 > root then this could be a simple permission problem on one of the
 > setup files. Could have gotten changed by the block going bad. mmmmm.
 > Still poking at it.

Until a user logs on (or an auto login executes), the system runs as: root.

--
JRT

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