White screen upon login to FC9

[balloonatic]

I installed FC9 last week to give linux a try and it was working ok until the other day when I tried to log in.

As soon as I click log in I just get a white screen with the cursor. I can still move the cursor though. Anyone else had this problem? Know a fix?

I'm a total newbie to any linux distros so go easy on me with advanced terms

Cheers.

[b_martinez]

Hi, balloonatic.
I've not had this particular problem, but, I've a few questions.
Did you try to do anything while you had the whiteout? What I mean is
i) try to right click anywhere on the screen? If you do this, do you get a menu?
ii) try the ctrl+alt+backspace key combination to kill/reset the X server.
iii) Do you know how to boot into run-level 3 and start the x server from there?
iv) Did you do a total re-boot? How did it work.
Hope to be able to help you.
Bill

[balloonatic]

Tried right-clicking, I dont get a menu.
Tried ctrl+alt+backspace, that just takes me back to the login screen where the same thing happens if I try to log in again. However it shows my desktop wallpaper for a split second before it goes back to the login screen.
I have no idea how to boot into run-level 3 or what the X server is.
Rebooting doesn't change a thing.

[b_martinez]

To try using a generic driver:
1)at startup, when bios passes off to Grub bootloader, press the down arrow
2)press the 'e' key [e=edit]
3)press the down arrow to get to the 2nd line [starts with 'kernel /vmlinuz']
4) at the end of the line type in 'xdrvr=vesa' [without the quotation marks]
5) hit 'enter' key then the 'b' key [b=boot]
If that doesn't work
To get into run level 3
1)at startup, when bios passes off to Grub bootloader, press the down arrow
2)press the 'e' key [e=edit]
3)press the down arrow to get to the 2nd line [starts with 'kernel /vmlinuz']
4) press the 'e' key again to edit that line and add the number '3' to the end, just the number, not the quotation marks.
hit the enter key, then the 'B' key to boot.
The screen should be showing a 'lot' of white writing on a black background , and when it stops, you'll have a login prompt. If not, then ctrl+alt+F1 key to get to a 'VT' or virtual terminal.
login with your normal user name then password
type in

startx

and hit enter.
If this doesn't work -- ctrl+alt+backspace

su - [hit 'enter']
[enter root password here] [hit 'enter']
kdm [hit 'enter']

The window manager is now using KDM instead of GDM, which means that instead of using Gnome's Desktop Manager, you are using KDE's desktop manager.
If none of these work, I apologize, I'm out of easy to do ideas, and we'll have to start doing things the hard way.
Bill

[balloonatic]

Ok, nothing worked up to your final suggestion about using KDM instead of GDM. I typed in the code you told me to but when I enter 'kdm' it says "-bash: KDM: command not found".

However after doing this, if I type startx, I am able to log in as 'root' without any white screen. But this way I dont have any of my settings I have in my normal user login. Plus it keeps telling me there are security issues when using root.

:S

[bingoUV]

Did you try to enable desktop effects / compiz / compiz-fusion / fusion-icon etc. just before you started getting this error?

When you login as root from command line (no need to startx), add another user by the following command. The second command will ask you for the password of the new user twice.

/usr/sbin/useradd tempuser
passwd tempuser

Now, try logging in as this tempuser. Do you still get white screen?

[balloonatic]

No it works perfectly when I run as tempuser.

I think the last time I used F9 I did enable desktop effects, I enabled the wobbly windows I think. Do you think that's whats ****ed it up?

[bingoUV]

Exactly. If you have intel video card, try http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?p=56115. Otherwise, google using your video card company, compiz and white screen as keywords.

[Steven6702]

I am having the same issue on an HP Pavillion dv5000 series and FC9.

I did several things since my last reboot so I'm not sure what might have caused it.

1) Played with keybindings a bit
2) Installed some themes, ended up setting to Darktools
3) Installed Firefox 3
4) Right before I rebooted, I went into session manager and click ed "remember this session"

When I have the white screen, I can go to a root shell and notice there are four compiz processes running. When I kill "compiz --sm-client-id 1055713dab000121379070600000078620000 glib gconf" the white screen disappears and I get to my desktop.

In its present state, however, the window decorator does not work and I cannot even see the tops of windows to move/minimize/maximize them. Anything I have open (such as Firefox right now) covers up my top panel so I can't access menus unless I close any other windows. Also no keyboard shortcuts work and I cannot use the workspace switcher to click into another workspace.

If I open a shell and just type "compiz" I get the white screen again, and when it closes it returns to this state and leaves a "not drawable" message in the bash window.

Is there any way to "roll back" settings on FC9 or a good place to see what configuration changes I made that might be causing the problem?

[Steven6702]

Oddly enough, even after having rebooted multiple times, here is what finally solved the problem for me.

Disabled desktop effects.
Enabled desktop effects.

The mere act of switching them off and on solved all my problems, and it still works after reboot.

If anyone knows why this would happen I'd appreciate some guidance, but my problem is solved for now.

But I am still interested in whether there is a viable way to keep track of configuration changes and roll back or review if necessary.

Thank you.

[balloonatic]

So disabling desktop effects then enabling them again solves this problem?

If so, how do I get into the settings to do this since I'm stuck at the white screen?

[Steven6702]

Once you have the white screen, press <Ctrl><Alt><F1> to get to a shell. Login as root, then do

ps -ef | grep compiz

to identify any compiz processes running. To get past the white screen you will need to kill those. So you'll need to ascertain what the pid's of those processes are (the four or five digit numbers near the beginning of each line) and do

kill 1000 | kill 2000 | kill 3000 | kill 4000

etc. where those numbers are replaced with the PIDs. Once you do that you should do another

ps -ef | grep compiz

and make sure there are no other compiz processes running (the only one you'll see is the "grep compiz", which is okay.

Once you've done that, do <Ctrl><Alt><F7> to return to your desktop interface, and you should be able to go in and disable/enable desktop effects.

There may be a more simple workaroun, but this is what worked for me. Please post if it solves your problem.

[morrowd3]

i had the same problem today and tried those solutions to no avail . But i did manage to solve it by using the yum remove compiz command in the command window, this removed all the compiz packages i had . Once i had done this i had my gui back after reboot. I then i reinstalled 2 packages using yum the compiz.x86_64 package for my system which is x86_64 and also the compiz-gnome.x86_64 packages once i had done this i had all my desktop effects back wobble etc. hope this is of some help.

[erno]

I'm a new Fedora user, and this solution worked for me. Thanks for such a clear explanation!
Best,

Ernesto

Originally Posted by Steven6702

Once you have the white screen, press <Ctrl><Alt><F1> to get to a shell. Login as root, then do

ps -ef | grep compiz

to identify any compiz processes running. To get past the white screen you will need to kill those. So you'll need to ascertain what the pid's of those processes are (the four or five digit numbers near the beginning of each line) and do

kill 1000 | kill 2000 | kill 3000 | kill 4000

etc. where those numbers are replaced with the PIDs. Once you do that you should do another

ps -ef | grep compiz

and make sure there are no other compiz processes running (the only one you'll see is the "grep compiz", which is okay.

Once you've done that, do <Ctrl><Alt><F7> to return to your desktop interface, and you should be able to go in and disable/enable desktop effects.

There may be a more simple workaroun, but this is what worked for me. Please post if it solves your problem.

[leigh123linux]

Originally Posted by bingoUV

Exactly. If you have intel video card, try http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?p=56115. Otherwise, google using your video card company, compiz and white screen as keywords.

To start compiz on F9 with intel cards !

Try using this command to start the effects instead of the desktop effects menu launcher !

compiz --replace --sm-disable --ignore-desktop-hints ccp  --indirect-rendering

P.S I don't normally bother to answer threads like this because of the lack of info posted !!! ( No one here bothered to post thier GPU type )