[vox-tech] KDE on FreeBSD Hanging on login

[Michael Benedetti]

On Nov 30, 2005, at 7:19 PM, Jeffrey J. Nonken wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:01:36 -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 08:26:06PM -0800, Michael Benedetti wrote:
>>
>>> I am a newbie to FreeBSD.
>
> Me too, but I've done some of this lately, so it's fresh on my mind.
> Not to mention fresh in my bookmarks. :)
>>>
>>> I managed to get the install to work after
>>> three tries, and even configured it to boot directly to the KDE
>>> boot manager, where I can login.  I have a few minor issues,
>>> beginning with the inability to login using the KDE boot manager.
>>>  This behavior started as soon as I tried to use the KDE boot
>>> manager to start Gnome. (I wanted to automount the cd drives, and
>>> read that Gnome does this by default, while I was not able to
>>> accomplish this in KDE.  I am getting an error whenever I try to
>>> mount the CD in KDE.)
>>>
>>
>>> The Console Login seems to be inoperative.
>>>
>> As in text-mode?  (Under Linux, typically accessed via
>> Ctrl+Alt+F1..F6, etc.)
>
Bill and Jeffrey,

Ctrl+Alt+F3 worked!  It seems the trouble was my (only) user was hosed 
up.  After removing and adding the user, everything seems ok.  Thank 
you both for your help!  I think with the help of nice lugod folks like 
you I'll be able to avoid going back to XP, and that is my goal.

Thanks again for your help!

Michael

> IIRC KDM gives you the option to choose your window manager, shut
> down, or log into a console (terminal emulator) session. Sounds like
> the terminal emulator isn't working either.
>
> Michael, early in the boot process you should see a text menu come up
> with something like an 8 second timeout. There will be an ASCII art
> BSD Demon on the right. If you hit "3" before it times out it should
> put you to a failsafe session, which I HOPE would not get you into
> KDM. If that doesn't work, try again with "4". If that doesn't work,
> boot off a bloody Knoppix or FreeSBIE CD and you'll be able to access
> everything as a mounted data drive. Or...
>>
>> If you're on a network, it should also be possible to login
>> remotely, to see what's going on.
>
> ...another good suggestion. What you need is a command prompt and a
> text editor, or whatever nice GUI editor Knoppix gives you, or some
> such. That, and root access.
>
>
> The first step I'd take would be to disable KDM, log in on the command
> line, and type "startx" to see if you can log into X at all. Here's
> how we do that:
>
> Get into your command prompt (discussed above) and login as your
> regular user. If you can't do that (you went through Knoppix or
> something) cd /home/username relative to the mount point. Remove or
> rename the file called .xinitrc. That will stop you trying to log into
> a window manager.
>
> Then you need to edit /etc/ttys (again relative to the mount point, if
> on a live CD). This is where you need root access. You'll find a line
> similar to this:
>
> ttyv8   "/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon"  xterm   off secure
>
> ...only it'll have the kdm manager and it'll say "on". You need to
> change "on" to "off" and save it. [Ref:
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-xdm.html]
>
>
> Reboot, it should get you to a command prompt this time. I don't know
> if you're new to *nix so I won't go into detail about getting X
> running, but you need to do that. The handbook has more details than I
> can cover anyway:
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-config.htm
> l
>
> That wraps on my screen, that should end with "html". Not gonna turn
> wrapping off for that, though. Use this instead if you like:
> http://tinyurl.com/5k5wg
>
> Once you have X working, try running KDE as a window manager without
> using a display manager. Log in as your user and enter the following:
>
> echo "exec startkde" > ~/.xinitrc
>
> [Ref:
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11-wm.html]
>
> Then type "startx" and it should come up in KDE. If it is, you're
> golden, at least as regards KDE.
>
> Go back and fix that line in /etc/ttys, reboot, and see if KDM will
> let you log in now. If not... I don't know where to go from there, but
> you'll have verified that X itself works, and KDE works, and now you
> know how to enable and disable KDM.
>
>
>
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