GNOME freezing at splash screen

[bryansmith]

Hey all,

Once in a while, when I had tried GNOME, it would freeze at the GNOME splash screen. There is no way to get around it. I remember reading somewhere about killing 'gksu' but I couldn't find any running processes last time that happened. I did this because I remember reading that if you leave GNOME and something is using gksu when you leave (and you save the session), gksu will be running behind the splash waiting for a password next time GNOME runs. There is no way that could happen for me because the only thing I would run as root would be from a terminal (ie. editing configuration files or using pacman).

Any ideas?

Bryan

[Roxoff]

The only time I've experienced something like this is when using an NFS-mounted /home. In my house, my server is under the stairs and the missus' PC is in the bedroom (at the moment - getting a dedicated computer room soon). But the wiring occasionally lets us down. NFS would normally mount at boot up 3 times out of 4, the other time you'd get left with a hanging spash screen at gnome login. My solution was to mount the /home elsewhere and have local homes on that computer, so you had a smooth system yet still have access to your server-based files if needed.

I doubt that problem is the same as yours but you never know.

[bryansmith]

Thanks for the reply,

Unfortunately, that can't be the cause because, truthfully, I don't even know what NFS is.

Any other ideas?

Bryan

[oz]

I rarely run Gnome so can't say what the problem might be but if you really-really want to run Gnome, you should be able to start it from command line with "startx", bypassing GDM.

[bryansmith]

Thanks for the reply ozar,

Sometimes it would work from GDM, sometimes it wouldn't. This question is more out of perplexity than anything.

I would like to run GNOME but I am fine with KDE .

Bryan

[Roxoff]

Thanks for the reply,

Unfortunately, that can't be the cause because, truthfully, I don't even know what NFS is.

Any other ideas?

Bryan

NFS is Network File System - it allows you to mount remote partitions as though they are local - directories get exported on the server and listed in the client's fstab.

It takes tinkering at both ends to set up, so if you dont know what it is, I think that rules it out.

The situation that I had was that /home was not mounted, causing these problems - there were no user directories available. Is it possible that you have an old hard disk with your /home on it, causing mount problems locally?