Jeff Bailey on 28 Oct 2009 07:46:03 -0700


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[PLUG] Blank Gnome Desktop


Hello all...
 
I'm having an issue with PCLinuxOS 2009 (Gnome) that I could use some help with.
 
I was using PCLOS-Gnome 2007 on my system without any issues, until I did an update via synaptic.  At that point, after I logged on, my desktop was completely black - no menu bars, no background, nothing except a mouse cursor.

I had been planning to install 2009 anyway, and had been told that a "fresh" install was required (IE: couldn't update 2007 to be 2009), so I didn't worry about it and installed 2009 on top of my current install.  I formatted at least the / and /usr partitions, if not others, but did NOT format the /home partition.

I still get the same issue - root can log in and get a desktop, but my user can't.  I get a graphical login prompt and can log in, but when it switches to the desktop, it just goes black.  I get a login sound, and have seen pop-up windows after logging in (like "checking for updates"), and have a mouse cursor, but other than that it's just black.  If I ctrl-alt-bkspace it drops out of X to a  console window.

I've removed my users .gconf, .gconfd, .gnome,. .gnome2, .gnome2_private, .metacity and .nautilus directories to no avail.  All permissions/ownerships looks right - group # and user #s look valid.  /tmp isn't full, and there's nothing in there that looks like locks or temporary X files.  I did a apt-get dist-upgrade to make sure I was running the latest of everything.

The vid card is a Geforce FX 5500, and xorg.conf shows the "nv" driver and valid settings for the card and monitor.

I've changed the default boot runlevel to 3 to prevent X starting at boot and then logged in as my user to a console.  Then started X by doing "startx" and dumping the output to a file - nothing looks wrong in the log, but all I get is the black screen.

I'm not sure what else to look at - any ideas?  I can provide any relevant confs or logs if someone wants them...

How do I do something like switch to xfce?  Is that something I can do "in-place", like with a package install or something, or is it a larger issue than that?

Thanks for any info....
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