Installation Woes-FC6 and FC8 running as terminal

DougK · #1 18th March 2009, 05:53 PM

I actually have 2 problems, only one of which needs to be solved, as FC6 and FC8 have different issues preventing "successful" install.

First, what I am trying to do:

I am attempting to set up a series of "Dumb Terminals" that run an application hosted on another machine (HP-UX) One machine is to display the CDE login from the HP-UX host. The other 2 are to simply show a blank terminal when not in use.

All three machines are Dell Optiplex 360s with Intel G31/G33/G35 graphics chipsets

So,

gdm.conf files for the 3 machines:

1: 0=Terminal
2: 0=Terminal
3: 0=Terminal -query host

First up, the issue with FC6:

The application that is to be run tends to misbehave when the color depth is set above 256 color (8 bit). The "in-box" intel driver does not work, but the vesa driver does. I've been trying to rebuild the intel driver like I had to do for the network card but I run into a snag when running the configure script. The script exits with an error saying that LibDRM is not installed, however I have installed libDRM and rebuilt the kernel.

When I set the color depth to 8 using the vesa driver, the colors are all messed up. This is rather important as the displays are color-coded to aid in data visualization. If I set the color to anything higher, printing doesn't work properly. XPR complains that 24-bit deep bitmaps are not supported.

So, if I can either get the VESA driver to display properly or get the intel driver to work, I can use FC6 to accomplish what I need.

Now, the issue with FC8:

First of all, when running gdmsetup, under X server setup (security tab, iirc) only Standard is available under the drop-down menu. There is no selection for Terminal or Chooser. I don't know if this is indicative of a problem or if it is just a minor issue with the graphic configuration tool.

When I edit the gdm custom.conf file manually and change 0=Standard to 0=Terminal, X keeps crashing when I restart GDM. I can see the same "X" cursor that is there when running the FC6 machines in terminal mode for about half a second before it flashes off and retries 6 times, upon which it displays an error message saying "X has crashed 6 times in the past 90 seconds, something bad is probably happening, retry in 2 minutes"

Now, if I run the command X -audit 0 -terminate from a VT below 7, it works as expected, even when I have it query the host.

If I can get the FC8 machine to load a terminal at boot properly, I can use FC8 to accomplish what I need.

Both setups have all necessary entries in /etc/hosts and X0.hosts.

I've included custom.conf, xorg.conf, xorg.0.log, xorg.1.log, and the output from dmesg from the machine with FC8 installed. The files are more or less the same for the FC6 machines with the exception of the video driver being used (vesa instead of intel)

DougK · #2 18th March 2009, 06:05 PM

/etc/gdm/custom.conf

Code:

# GDM Custom Configuration file.
#
# This file is the appropriate place for specifying your customizations to the
# GDM configuration. If you run gdmsetup, it will automatically edit this
# file for you and will cause the daemon and any running GDM GUI programs to
# automatically update with the new configuration. Not all configuration
# options are supported by gdmsetup, so to modify some values it may be
# necessary to modify this file directly by hand.
#
# This file overrides the default configuration settings. These settings
# are stored in the GDM System Defaults configuration file, which is found
# at the following location.
#
# /usr/share/gdm/defaults.conf.
#
# This file contains comments about the meaning of each configuration option,
# so is also a useful reference. Also refer to the documentation links at
# the end of this comment for further information. In short, to hand-edit
# this file, simply add or modify the key=value combination in the
# appropriate section in the template below this comment section.
#
# For example, if you want to specify a different value for the Enable key
# in the "[debug]" section of your GDM System Defaults configuration file,
# then add "Enable=true" in the "[debug]" section of this file. If the
# key already exists in this file, then simply modify it.
#
# Older versions of GDM used the "gdm.conf" file for configuration. If your
# system has an old gdm.conf file on the system, it will be used instead of
# this file - so changes made to this file will not take effect. Consider
# migrating your configuration to this file and removing the gdm.conf file.
#
# If you hand edit a GDM configuration file, you can run the following
# command and the GDM daemon will immediately reflect the change. Any
# running GDM GUI programs will also be notified to update with the new
# configuration.
#
# gdmflexiserver --command="UPDATE_CONFIG <configuration key>"
#
# e.g, the "Enable" key in the "[debug]" section would be "debug/Enable".
#
# You can also run gdm-restart or gdm-safe-restart to cause GDM to restart and
# re-read the new configuration settings. You can also restart GDM by sending
# a HUP or USR1 signal to the daemon. HUP behaves like gdm-restart and causes
# any user session started by GDM to exit immediately while USR1 behaves like
# gdm-safe-restart and will wait until all users log out before restarting GDM.
#
# For full reference documentation see the gnome help browser under
# GNOME|System category. You can also find the docs in HTML form on
# http://www.gnome.org/projects/gdm/
#
# NOTE: Lines that begin with "#" are considered comments.
#
# Have fun!

[daemon]

AutomaticLogin=engineer

GtkModulesList=gail:atk-bridge:/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libkeymouselistener:/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libdwellmouselistener

AutomaticLoginEnable=true

DefaultSession=kde.desktop

[security]

DisallowTCP=false

CheckDirOwner=false

[xdmcp]

Enable=true

[gui]

GtkRC=

[greeter]

GlobalFaceDir=/usr/

[chooser]

[debug]

# Note that to disable servers defined in the GDM System Defaults
# configuration file (such as 0=Standard, you must put a line in this file
# that says 0=inactive, as described in the Configuration section of the GDM
# documentation.
#
[servers]
#0=Terminal
0=Standard
#1=Terminal
# Also note, that if you redefine a [server-foo] section, then GDM will
# use the definition in this file, not the GDM System Defaults configuration
# file. It is currently not possible to disable a [server-foo] section
# defined in the GDM System Defaults configuration file.

[server-Standard]
name=Standard server
command=/usr/bin/X -br -audit 0 -terminate
chooser=false
handled=true
flexible=false
priority=0

DougK · #3 18th March 2009, 06:06 PM

/etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Code:

# Xorg configuration created by pyxf86config

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     	"Default Layout"
	Screen      0  	"Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    	"Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  	"Keyboard0"
	Driver      	"kbd"
	Option	    	"XkbModel" "pc105"
	Option	    	"XkbLayout" "us+inet"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  	"Videocard0"
	Driver      	"intel"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Videocard0"
	DefaultDepth     8 
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     8
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load "glx"
	Load "dri"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
	Mode 0666
EndSection

DougK · #4 18th March 2009, 06:22 PM

dmesg output: dmesg output
/var/log/xorg.0.log: xorg.0.log
/var/log/xorg.1.log: xorg.1.log

JohnVV · #5 18th March 2009, 11:47 PM

first WHY fedora 6 & 8 ?
the very OLD intel drivers on them were not all that great

the update to 10 , i think, has the newly released driver

CentOS and Red Hat will also be updating to that new driver ( in time)

fedora 6 and 8 WILL NEVER HAVE IT

DougK · #6 19th March 2009, 12:10 AM

Mostly because that is what we have been using on customer sites. Its more to keep things consistent. 10 seemed to completely ignore the custom.conf file in favor of the gdm.schemas file and I couldn't even get it to "flash" a terminal like I am getting with 8, it just simply kept booting gnome.