This has got to be the longest time without a working system since I started using Debian in november 1995. Of course, when I say 'working' I mean 'with a working desktop' - I still have FTP and all non X-related stuff working, and my system thinks it has completely upgraded OK.
Normally I would have given in and re-installed by now, but I thought that maybe if I air my problems in this forum, someone else might find my experiences helpful, so I'll plug on for another week or two, or until I really need to use my computer again.
Thanks to the tips from Sharninder Singh in response to my earlier post http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200306/msg00484.html (Problems upgrading from potato to woody).
Your answers (dpkg-reconfigure mc) and (dpkg-reconfigure xserver) were quite correct, even though the latter didn't succeed in getting X working. The answer turned out to be a bug in the documentation! On this page
http://www.debian.org/releases/woody/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html
I read the following instructions:
If you were upgrading from Debian version 2.0 or earlier, and have the X Window System installed, give the following commands:
apt-get remove xbase apt-get install xfonts-base xfonts-75dpi xfonts-100dpi xfonts-scalable
As I was upgrading from potato (Debian version 2.2r0), I thought that this could be ignored. Sadly, skipping this step means that X refuses to start (Fatal server error: could not open default font 'fixed'). Maybe there needs to be a 'depends' in some package or other, but I am not clued in enough to figure out which package needs to have this. If anyone with more knowledge could suggest somthing, I'll file a real bug report against the offending package.
Anyhow, with a simple apt-get, I now have X working, and can move on to the next problem. Gnome won't start.
I have gdm installed, giving me a login dialog (greeter) in which I enter a user id and password. Pressing OK would then normally take me to the Gnome desktop for that user. <slight grumble> the greeter looks a bit different now, resizing itself between the user id and password entry, which is slightly irritating. I thought I remembered having two separate entry fields for id and password, but I could be mistaken </slight grumble>.
What happens now is that the screen blanks for about a second, then the greeter comes back again, without logging in. When I look in ~/.gnome-errors, there are a couple of warnings, but one fatal error which seems to be the root of the problem: the script /etc/gdm/Sessions/Gnome calls for the execution of another script /usr/bin/gnome-session, which is sadly missing from my system. Despite looking through the update instructions, I found no mention of this script or where it comes from. Anyone have any ideas?
-- Cheers!
.~. /V\ // \\ /( )\ ^`~´^ < hugge >
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