Re: Fail to start Gnome desktop

[Stephen Liu <satimis icare com hk>]

Hi Sean,

Thanks for your advice.

I made further test as follows to solve the problem but met with the same 
frustration;

1) removed .gconf, .gconfd, .gnome, .gnome2 and .gnome2_private from USER.
Each time when I login GNOME they were re-created.  GNOME 2.4 logo started and 
died immediately with following warning popup;

ERROR
There was an error starting the GNOME_Settings Daemon

Some things such as Themes, sounds or background settings may not work 
correctly

The Setting Daemon restarted too many times

The last error message was
Failed to activate 'OAFIID:GNOME_Setting Daemon'
GNOME will still try to restart the Setting Daemon
next time your login
<close>

Clicked <close>

GNOME can login but its desktop fails to start

I can start Debian applications from there such as
- Mozilla 1.0.0
- Kmail
- OpenOffice Write
etc.

(I also test this step by rebooting the PC)


2) tried 'apt-get install GNOME (/gnome)
# apt-get install GNOME
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package GNOME
localhost:~# apt-get install gnome
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Package gnome has no available version, but exists in the database.
This typically means that the package was mentioned in a dependency and
never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not available with the contents
of sources.list
E: Package gnome has no installation candidate

I could not make it unless installing all relevant packages manually
(I found all of them with "apt-cache search gnome", at least 100 packages)

3) tried to re-install following packages
# apt-cache search gnome | grep gconf
gconf - GNOME configuration database system. (daemon and tools)
gconf2 - GNOME configuration database system. (daemon and tools, for GNOME2)
libgconf-dev - GNOME configuration database system development files.
libgconf11 - GNOME configuration database system libraries
libgconf2-4 - GNOME configuration database system libraries (for GNOME2)
libgconf2-dev - GNOME configuration database system development files. (for 
GNOME2)

and repeated step 1) above.  No improvement achieved.  Same result generated.

I don't know how to proceed further.

B.R.
Stephen


在 星期二 06 一月 2004 01:20，Sean Middleditch 寫道:
> On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 00:01, Stephen Liu wrote:
> > Hi Wouter, Sean and others,
> >
> > Further to my last posting.  I rechecked follows;
>
> <snip/>
>
> > The content inside seems broken
>
> If you've not yet run GNOME or any GNOME apps (and thus have no settings
> in gconf you're worried about losing) then delete or backup the .gconf,
> .gconfd, and .gnome2 directories (as described in other mails on this
> thread) and try again then.
>
> You might also log a bug report with the Debian developers, letting them
> know about the problem with their packages on a fresh install.
>
> > B.R.
> > Stephen
> >
> > �銁 ���煺�� 05 銝���� 2004 23:56嚗吴ws 撖恍��:
> > > P嚙� Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 10:44:53AM -0500, Sean Middleditch skrev:
> > > > On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 10:35, uws wrote:
> > > > > P?? Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 10:13:01AM +0800, Stephen Liu skrev:
> > > > > > Kindly advise how to check the corrupted settings database. 
> > > > > > Which config file/files I have to check?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > Rename your ~./gnome and your ~/.gnome2 directories and try
> > > > > > > again.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > locate .gnome
> > > > > > [snip]
> > > > > > Shall I rename all above "/.gnome" and /.gnome2" directories?
> > > > >
> > > > > That's what I'd suggest :-)
> > > > >
> > > > >   $ cd
> > > > >   $ mv .gnome gnome-backupdir
> > > > >   $ mv .gnome2 gnome2-backupdir
> > > >
> > > > Of course, the settings database isn't in either of those
> > > > directories, its in .gconf.
> > >
> > > Aaaargh. I knew that. Well... s/gnome/gconf/s
> > >
> > >
> > >   mvrgr, Wouter
> > >
> > >
> > > P.S. Btw, Debian provides a gnome-desktop-environment package.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-list mailing list
> > gnome-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-list