Attempting to run Gnome 3

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

I am very much an beginner with Gentoo and any desktop environment.
I do not understand the USE flag and the --autounmask-write, and how it interacts with packages.. (I am trying to read up on this to understand though)

I followed the Gentoo handbook to install Gentoo, then attempted to install gnome, but ran into blocked packages.
This was solved by emerge genkernel-next

I was originally attempting to run gnome as root, found other posts saying that this is a bad idea, so created a user "carl".
When I am attempting to run startx, i get the following error:

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

Not sure if it would be helpful or not....

emerge --info

shazeal · Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 7:54 pm Post subject:

Is your path broken? As user carl...

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

Not sure how I added the user, but most likely did not use the -m

john_deaux · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 2:47 am Post subject:

Bandion,

The few times that I've had a slot conflict an update of the system resolved them.

Have you tried "emerge -avuND @world" to update the system?

Regards,

j_d

Sulman · n00b Joined: 15 Feb 2014 Posts: 63

Carl, is your user in the video group? It's necessary to get GLX available to a regular user.

can't hurt to do this:

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:06 am Post subject:

When building Gnome it helps to have /etc/make.profile pointing to the right profile. You can

eselect profile list

and eselect profile <number> to select the build profile (usually #4 or #5 on the option list). It makes Gnome a lot easier to install. You can also choose KDE here too.

In any case X11, the graphics system, tries to run .xinitrc when running startx. When the script .xinitrc ends, it will kill the server. If you don't have an .xinitrc, it will use the default session that's stored in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc . Here you'll see the commands you got that failed to run when you don't have twm, xclock, and xterm installed.

I'm not quite sure what desktop environments you have fully installed at this point but if you actually got Gnome3 installed, you can put "gnome-session" in your .xinitrc which will then start Gnome when you startx.
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shazeal · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 6:43 am Post subject:

If you want to start X by itself you need to emerge the whole thing.

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

It was Gnome 3 I was tying to install. I have no issues shelving that for something else.

I have tried emerging Xfce previously and was unable to get that to work as well, so ditched it and went back to Gnome 3
I will go back to it and try again

I have emerged X, and it does run, but only brings me to a black screen.. Will do some searching for that...

john_deaux:
Running "emerge -avuND @world" is what led me to installing Genkernal-next. Everything is up to date

eccerr0r:
My profile is set for Gnome/systemd
[3] default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop
[4] default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome
[5] default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome/systemd *
[6] default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/kde
[7] default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/kde/systemd

This is what a co-worker told me to select... would 4 be better? or should I just go with 3?

Thanks

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 2:48 pm Post subject:

Yes having the systemd profile would be the easiest way to get Gnome3 working.

When you say you have a black screen, do you see a mouse cursor or not? (and you have gnome-session in your .xinitrc?)

Did the "gnome-session" command get installed?

If you're using 'startx' to (eventually) start gnome, you may need to also run

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

No, the gnome-session was not in my .xinitrc file.
I added it as the last line

The user I created using useradd -m carl1 does not even have a .xinitrc

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

I will be out of town until the 26th, so my late replys are only due to that..
As soon as I am back, I will be back and running any commands suggested

THanks

Carl

eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 1:25 am Post subject:

This is a mishmash of questions and answers ... apologies, as there's a lot of things going on here.

I'm not sure where you got the .xinitrc you posted... that seems to be something someone lent you. All you need in your ~/.xinitrc are those two lines:

poncho · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 Mar 2011 Posts: 92

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

So for the user Carl1 I created the .xinitrc file with just the two lines below, and chmod it to 777

I ran X, and it just did a black screen, no cursor. Verified that the monitor did not go into sleep mode.

Ran gnome-session and received the following error:

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 3:11 pm Post subject:

It's a bit alarming that the screen blacks out with no cursor, will have to see why your X server is blacking out. Do you have "vte2_90" installed or "gnome-terminal" (or if you have xterm installed)? Try running one of these in your .xinitrc instead of gnome-session and see if you get a terminal on your X session, again having it as the only thing in your .xinitrc.

What graphics adaptor and how did you set up your graphics? What machine do you have? Is it a laptop? Does the external monitor port work?

As an aside, what happens if you try to run gnome-shell? This is probably not important yet as the X11 problem is a bigger issue.

I'd not look into the consolekit issue just yet, but if you are using systemd's consolekit, you can try running "loginctl" and see if systemd's consolekit is doing anything. If you're using the ConsoleKit package try "ck-list-sessions" for something similar.
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Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

Looks like I have the vte2_90 installed

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 3:30 pm Post subject:

If you log in remotely, can you run

DISPLAY=:0 vte2_90

and would anything pop up on the display after it's in the "black screen" state?

Are you using nvidia-drivers (closed source) or nouveau (open source) drivers?

There is a log file at /var/log/Xorg.0.log, may need to post that to see if there are any hints at why it didn't completely start up. If you run X and if it starts up completely, it should at least give you a mouse cursor.
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

For the drivers, it is the open source nouveau

with X running, no cursor
sshing in and running the Display command, I get a command prompt on the screen (dedicated monitor) and I also get the X cursor

Xorg.0.log

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

I had stepped away from my desk and a co-worker sat down and emerged gnome, it completed successfully

my .xinitrc

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 2:48 am Post subject:

Yes, just wanted to make sure all the pieces are working before assuming things. Showing that terminal prompt proves without a doubt the X server is working where a black screen with no cursor does not... Now it would be interesting to know exactly what went wrong - most likely it choosing not to use your .xinitrc for whatever reason (or was it switched to using gdm to login?)

Congratulations on a working install!
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

Bandion · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2014 Posts: 11

I would assume it is still using the xinitrc, but either way it is working....
any thoughts why X still shows the black screen?
But Gnome is working...
Appreciate your help..

Carl

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 3:08 pm Post subject:

Over the years the default screen appears to have changed but surprised the mouse cursor has been 'hidden' in a no-client situation.
The default screen usually is that well known stipple pattern which really should be kept for nostalgic and debug purposes...
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
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Leio · Developer Joined: 27 Feb 2003 Posts: 494 Location: Estonia

Using .xinitrc is often a bad idea. Better to use sessions, which for command line startx can be chosen with XSESSION environment variable (either one-off or in env.d for a default). In a login manager like gdm or lightdm those are exposed as the session choices. Stuff like "exec gnome-session" in .xinitrc can not work properly, because then your gnome-session does not run inside a dbus user session for example; you'd need "dbus-launch --exit-with-session -- gnome-session" or something like that. But session files take care of all that for you, but the presence of .xinitrc overrides a large part of it.
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ZeTaKa · n00b Joined: 26 Jan 2004 Posts: 25 Location: /home/zK

I have exactly the same problem. I followed this http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd/Installing_Gnome3_from_scratch manual and have the same problems. Black screen, and when appears somethings its something its wrong....

I used gentoo some much time ago, but now, every year i try to make a gentoo environment and i always fails. And the most part of the time, i have no time for try to solve all the issues of the install and back to other distros.

I can understand if i use ~amd64 branch for everything, some times things can fail, but my only package in unstable its the kernel, for i want tuxonice kernel. Gnome 3 works perfectly on other distros. But i want gnome3 on gentoo.

Im not quite sure, buts sure its a stupid idea. Maybe its needed activate hald and dbus with the system? In the how to don't say anything, but maybe its that...

And i have gdm on the start but just, it don't start