Duh. It just dawned on me. You did not have Gnome installed at all previously, right? Then, you installed only gnome-session? Does that apt-get utility install all of the necessary dependencies? If not, you may be missing vital programs needed by Gnome. Is there a way to install the entire Gnome Desktop via apt-get? If so, that's what I'd try.

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Hi unixhead, Thanks for your 3 postings and advice. I installed Debian (testing/unstable) with 'Sarge net-install'. 'locate gnome' found it there. The 2) URL refers to RH/Fedora. The problem encountered by me has been referred to GNOME but I could not find one relating to Debian (testing/unstable) I made further test as follows to solve the problem but met with the same frustration; 1) removed .gconf, .gconfd, .gnome, .gnome2 and .gnome2_private from USER. Each time when I login GNOME they were re-created. GNOME 2.4 logo started and died immediately with following warning popup; ERROR There was an error starting the GNOME_Settings Daemon Some things such as Themes, sounds or background settings may not work correctly The Setting Daemon restarted too many times The last error message was Failed to activate 'OAFIID:GNOME_Setting Daemon' GNOME will still try to restart the Setting Daemon next time your login <close> Clicked <close> GNOME can login but its desktop fails to start I can start Debian applications from there such as - Mozilla 1.0.0 - Kmail - OpenOffice Write etc. (I also test this step by rebooting the PC) 2) tried 'apt-get install GNOME (/gnome) # apt-get install GNOME Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done E: Couldn't find package GNOME localhost:~# apt-get install gnome Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done Package gnome has no available version, but exists in the database. This typically means that the package was mentioned in a dependency and never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not available with the contents of sources.list E: Package gnome has no installation candidate ("apt-get install gnome desktop" same output) I could not make it unless installing all relevant packages manually (I found all of them with "apt-cache search gnome", at least 100 packages) 3) tried to re-install following packages # apt-cache search gnome | grep gconf gconf - GNOME configuration database system. (daemon and tools) gconf2 - GNOME configuration database system. (daemon and tools, for GNOME2) libgconf-dev - GNOME configuration database system development files. libgconf11 - GNOME configuration database system libraries libgconf2-4 - GNOME configuration database system libraries (for GNOME2) libgconf2-dev - GNOME configuration database system development files. (for GNOME2) and repeated step 1) above. No improvement achieved. Same result generated. I don't know how to proceed further. B.R. satimis

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Man, I don't know. If I were in your shoes, I'd probably wipe-out /tmp/orbit--<my_user_name>. In my /home directory, I'd remove .gconf* and .gnome*. Then, I'd re-boot, login to Gnome, and let it remake all those directories. If that did not do it, I would conclude it is a Debian-related matter that has a lot to do with it being an unstable release, and likely has something broken for the time being. In the meantime, I'd submit a bug report and wait to see if a fix comes about. Who knows what it could be? You are able to login to GDM, so the permissions must be right, and the GDM user and GDM group must be present. You are able to start the gnome session, and you pointed to the Xsession file, which integrates everything. I don't know what else it could be, and I'm not familiar with Debian to recognize any distribution quirks. Is there a specific reason you are using a version that is in testing?

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Hi unixhead I performed follow as ROOT # cd /tmp # ls -a . .ICE-unix .X11-unix .font-unix kde-satimis mcop-satimis .. .X0-lock .X64-lock .gdm_socket ksocket-satimis ssh-qUrzs951 "orbit-satimis" is not there. > Is there a specific reason you are > using a version that is in testing? I have a RH9 box also not stable. OOo1.1 and Thunderbird have problems running on it. My target turning to Debian is to find a stable Linux OS to build a up-to-date workstation doing daily route. Besides I expect to learn Debian technology because I never touched it before. I misunderstood that applying "Sarge-net-installation" will deliver me an up-to-date workstation similar to Gentoo 1.4 does. In fact I have several projects pending to explore such as; 1) LinuxFromScratch 2) InstantMessaging and Jabber server etc. If I could not solve the problem I will leave the Debian box as it is. B.R. satimis

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Hiya satimis. {SNIP} My target turning to Debian is to find a stable Linux OS to build a up-to-date workstation doing daily route. {/SNIP} I too was in your position, trying to find a nice fast and reliable distro to run both on my work box and at home. Having tried numerous flavours of GNUlinux/BSD over the years I have personally settled for slackware....perhaps you want to give it a go if you haven't already.

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Hi, Are Slackware and Solaris from Sun similar? B.R. satimis

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I just installed Debian Sarge and ran into the exact same symptom trying to start the Gnome desktop. Googling brought me here, but didn't provide a fix. I searched the Debian buglist and the only reference I found had been closed, as the developer felt that the problem was the result of file system corruption. Details are here: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=223582 Since, generally, one would hope that a newer version of the gnome-core package would include a fix, and since it is getting a bit late and I am tired, I went ahead and did a distribution upgrade to unstable. Obviously, this may NOT be what you want to do, but I am experimenting, so what the heck... If you would like to do such yourself, instructions are in the Debian Reference here: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-woody.en.html#s5.3.1 The method using dselect worked fine for me. Of course, the motto of unstable seems to be update/upgrade early & often! Hope this helps. CDRigby

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Hi cdrigby, Thanks for your advice. Are you now running GNOME 2.4 after following the inststruction on the URL in your posting? On about Dec. 29,2004 I ran - dselect update - apt-get dist-upgrade and corrected some other problems not only Gnome. Before I could not login Gnome. Now I can but its desktop fails to start. I posted my problem on Gnome forum on Jan 7, 2004 and on Jan 8, 04 I got a detail advice from the moderator as follow; >>> http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5084 WARNING: If at any point, you get errors from any of this, then stop what you are doing! Installing a broken bonobo-activation will likely make things worse for you in the long run. If you have any further problems, then post a reply in this thread, and we'll try to help you through them. First, you'll want to download the source code for bonobo-activation. You can do that via this link. Once you have it, uncompress it using whatever uncompression program you prefer ('tar zxvf bonobo-activation-1.0.3.tar.gz' is what I would use). If you're not already in a terminal window, load one up and go the the directory containing the source code. You'll know you're in the right place if you type 'ls' and you see files like "configure", "README", and "INSTALL". Now that the source code is all there, it's time to apply the patch. If you don't already have it as a seperate file, then copy and paste the text you posted into a simple text file. Name the file bonobo.patch, and stick it in the directory with the source code. Then, you apply the patch by typing "patch < bonobo.patch". Now that the source code has been successfully patched, you have to recompile the code. Before doing this, you need to find out where Gnome is installed on your system (I don't know where Debian puts it off-hand, so maybe someone can provide information to skip this step). One way to do this is to type "which gnome-panel" in a terminal window. On my system, it replies with "/opt/gnome/bin/gnome-panel", but will likely show you something different. Whatever it shows, everything before "/bin/gnome-panel" is known as the prefix (So in this case, my prefix is /opt/gnome... your's is probably /usr/local, but I can't know for certain). Now, you should run "./configure --prefix=/opt/gnome" from within the source directory (replacing /opt/gnome with whatever prefix your system uses). This will check your system to make sure you can compile things properly. Most of the messages probably won't make a lot of sense to you, but keep an eye out for any errors. Once configure is finished, type "make", and the compile will begin. Hopefully, it will succeed. Once it does, you'll want to become root and type "make install" to put everything where it needs to be, and that should be it. If everything worked properly, feel free to delete the source code. <<< However I could not find "gnome" and "gnome-panel" according to his method. I found them in my own way. (please refers to the above URL for the complete story). I am not sure how to proceed and started to ask again. Now I am still waiting for his reply. B.R. satimis

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Sorry, I should have been a bit more specific about the steps I took. I definitely did not attempt to compile from source. 1. I edited /etc/apt/sources.list and changed all values of "testing" to "unstable." Note that the Debian reference gives the command to use sed to do this from the command line on the page previously referenced: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-woody.en.html 2. I ran dselect like so: ~# dselect update This command hit the repositories for the new package lists. 3. Then, on to select: ~# dselect select I did not wish to select any more packages at this point, so when shown the package selection list, I just pressed <ENTER>. No issues needed to be resolved, so dselect exited. 4. I then installed: ~# dselect install Predictably, about 45 minutes of downloading, installing and configuring insued. Note that the reference guide suggests NOT to use apt-get, as it does not always catch all recommended and suggested packages. That was eally all there was to it. I rebooted, and Gnome 2.4 worked fine. CDRigby

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Hi In running # dselect update dselect: configuration error: unknown option option: Success What does it mean??? Can I ignore it and continue to proceed # dselect select # dselect install ??? # cat /etc/apt/sources.list >>> #deb copy:///cdrom/ sarge main deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Sarge_ - Official NetInst Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20031118)]/ unstable contrib main deb ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb-src ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib deb ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib deb-src ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib <<< I also tried comment out # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Sarge_ - Official NetInst Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20031118)]/ unstable contrib main #deb ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib #deb-src ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib The same result. B.R. satimis

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I would remove references to security.debian.org and all of the "stable" branches. Easier than commenting things out is to copy: cd /etc/apt cp sources.list sources.list.backup then edit sources.list, deleting all lines except the ones you wish to use. For example, here is my sources.list (I am in Paris, France). deb ftp://ftp2.fr.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb-src ftp://ftp2.fr.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb-src ftp://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb ftp://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb-src ftp://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian/ unstable main Try that, but use only the ftp sections for ftp.hk.debian.org (Hong Kong)? I suspect that you DO want to see the update stage complete before proceeding to the select and install stages. CDR

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Hi CDR, Wonderful, I got GNOME 2.4 now. Steps taken as follows; 1) Editted /et/apt/sources.list, changing all 'testing' and 'stable' to 'unstable'; # cat /etc/apt/sources.list deb ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb-src ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main deb ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib deb-src ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib 2) Ran # dselect update (Remark: it worked normal later after removing 'expert' from /etc/dpkg/dselect.cfg) # dselect select (Pressed 'Q' not selecting any new package) # dselect install It took about half hour to complete downloading, config and installation and delivered me GNOME 2.4, Mozilla 1.5, etc. I think I can skip "dselect select" if I don't select a new package??? Shall I change back all "unstable" to "testing" and "stable" respectively on /etc/apt/sources.list as to its original settings??? Lot of thanks for your continue advice, your effort and time spent. Besides; 'hk' means 'Hong Kong'. I am in Hong Kong. Greetings to Paris, a nice metropolitan. In early 19xx, I made several visits there including south France. B.R. satimis

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B. R. Satimis, Excellent. I'm glad you have it working. Stay with "unstable" in the /etc/apt/sources.list file, as you are now tracking that branch of Debian. Make sure you follow the debian bug-tracking information so that you can repsond quickly to critical security or functionality bugs. Details are at the debian website. have fun & Happy Computing!

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