can only start gnome and xterm as root

I had enlightenment installed earlier and could only open xterm if i was logged in under root, but i could do (seemingly) anything else. now that i have gnome installed, i can only start gnome as root. i get a fatal error when starting it as my other user (when the loading box comes up) and it stops loading.

can someone help me with this? i tried fixing the xterm problem by adding user to the wheel, audio, and user groups but that didn't help.

thanks in advance :)

What's the exact error message you get?

The error message is:

Code:

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The GNOME Session Manager (process 10544) has crashed due to a fatal error (Aborted).
When you close this dialog, all applications will close and your session will exit.
Please save all your files before closing this dialog.

[Restart Application]      [Close]      [Inform Developers]

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It does nothing when I choose an action. It doesn't completely freeze, though, as I can CTRL+ALT+BCKSPC back to the command line.

Both ".xinitrc" files for root and user are identical...all they have in them are "gnome-session" and it works fine for root but not for user.

Thanks for helping :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by josolanes

I had enlightenment installed earlier and could only open xterm if i was logged in under root, but i could do (seemingly) anything else. now that i have gnome installed, i can only start gnome as root. i get a fatal error when starting it as my other user

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that would not be user group but rather users

Quote:

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Originally Posted by loft306

Quote:

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Originally Posted by josolanes

I had enlightenment installed earlier and could only open xterm if i was logged in under root, but i could do (seemingly) anything else. now that i have gnome installed, i can only start gnome as root. i get a fatal error when starting it as my other user

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that would not be user group but rather users

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oh :oops: that was a typo. i've tried adding it as group "user" but it gave me an error saying that the group doesn't exist, so i immediately changed it to "users"

i just tried deleting and adding the user again, but that didn't work either. this time i used this command to add him:

Code:

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useradd -m -G users,wheel,audio,portage -s /bin/bash user

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(i wanted him under the portage group)

it still didn't work though. i'm not sure why it's not loading.

i found that it doesn't load anything but the cross for a pointer if i don't move the mouse; it loads the loading box if i do move the mouse; and if i try loading it another time while moving the mouse, i get the loading box (with nothing shown as loaded) and the error box too.

nevermind...i'll just try another desktop. i'm moving onto xfce4 now. gnome's nice and easy to use, but there's just something missing about it...so i'll keep looking for another.

thanks for the suggestions everybody

ok.....

i've narrowed it down to user having a problem running startx...as i now have xfce4 installed, but user can't run it from the command startx, but root can

EDIT: user can't launch a gui at all...using startx or startxfce4 (command to run xfce4)

any idea how i can fix this or what's causing it?

*bump*

still having this problem....i've been logged in as root for over a day now running in the x-server. does anyone have an idea how to fix this? i've searched online and the only thing that seemed like a solution to this was that my user somehow lost his groups?? so, as i stated above, i added him to the users,wheel, and audio groups but that didn't help any. :(

i'd really appreciate some help on this. it happens with any window manager i use (i've used gnome, fluxbox, and xfce4 now). it just won't load them (as any user but root).... :?

Hmm.. I once had a similar problem, I could only get an xterm under root.

I no longer use Gentoo though. I will Google to find an answer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by George Harrison

Hmm.. I once had a similar problem, I could only get an xterm under root.

I no longer use Gentoo though. I will Google to find an answer.

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thanks :)

i googled some and came up with one site (in english) that seemed relevant, but lost the site. a lot of other sites were in other languages and seemed to have a similar problem, but i couldn't understand them.

thanks for helping me :)