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Gnome panel (taskbar) flaked out

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dishawjp:
Thanks for the replies.  I don't have KDE installed, so can't switch to that GUI.  The hardware is old and slow and I chose Gnome for that reason.

Void Main, Yes, I did the "userdel" "useradd" and the "passwd username" commands.  As I wrote, I could log in with that name and access the account *in virtual terminal* mode only.  No GUI. Before readding the account, I even went so far as to cd to the /home directory and "rm -rf username" to remove traces of the account from that area.  I also checked the /ect/passwd file to make sure that it had been properly removed from there.  I did not go into the /tmp directory to check there, and probably should have since I think that there are some "orbit-username" type files there, and there may be others.  I also tried to use a new (non-previously used) username and password just in case I'd somehow hosed something that was referencing my original username.  Same difference. In any case, a new account is created; the new user can log in in text mode; when "startx" is entered, Gnome tries to start, enlightenment loads; and then a blank screen. Doing a ctrl-alt-F2 will give a functional virtual terminal, but never a GUI.  It will create the .gnome, .gnome-desktop, .xauth, and similar Gnome related files, but Gnome will not run.

This really has me stumped.  Here I've been telling my students they should dump Windows and go Linux, and I can't even access the GUI in MY Linux account on MY machine.  Embarrassing :-(

Any other thoughts?  It seems to be something more with Gnome, though as I wrote before, even linuxconf seems to be having difficulties, whether run in text mode or from the GUI.  Maybe if I give a step-by step of what I'm doing and what happens...

1) boot the computer to text mode
2) login as root
3) userdel username
4) cd /home
5) ls -a
6) rm -rf username
7) cd /etc
8) more passwd (verify that username is gone)
9) useradd username
10)passwd username (enter password and etc)
11) more passwd (check that username added)
12) cd /home/username
13) ls -a (see that .bashrc and other files there)
14) shutdown -r now
15) login as username (no problem)
16) startx (Gnome starts up, Enlightenment starts.. then a blank blue screen)
17) ctrl-alt-F2
18) login as username
19) cd
20) ls -a (I find .gnome and .gnome-desktop and other proper-looking-to-me Gnome files)
21) rm core (yep, get one of those every time)
22) shutdown -h now (grab another beer or two)
23) reboot and try it again (repeat process with variations like trying to add the account with linuxconfig, copying files from other user accounts to try and make it work, and etc.) until fridge is barren of beer.  
24) Wake up next morning with a hangover and post to this list.

Any thoughts at all?  Maybe I should try a different brand of beer?  That's probably it!

Jim

dishawjp:
In case anyone else runs into this problem, I fianlly fixed it last night.  What a nightmare!

First I tried a full reinstall of RH 6.2.  No happiness there, so I logged on as root and did a "rm -rf" of /home/username and /etc/X11.  Then I went into the /tmp and deleted all files and directories bearing any relationship to any of the affected usernames.  I deleted linuxconf since that was misbehaving as well, and installed again.  Still no happiness, just a different error message when I tried to enter the GUI.  Sooo I thought that an upgrade to RH 7.0 might work.  An hour or so later (ths is real old hardware) the install was complete.  But I was still getting the same damned error message!  I don't remember the name of the file it was whining about, though it did begin with "e"

Anyway, by this time I figured I had next to nothing to lose and did a good old "mkfs" on hda5, my main partition and reinstalled RH 6.2.  

Amazingly, everything went perfectly and now I'm back up and running.  I still have to configure my ppp dialer and network settings, and get my ~/.pinerc written for e-mail, but all my hardware is configured and as far as I can tell, everything is working well.

I hope to have better hardware in another couple of weeks and will get to have all sorts of fun setting that up.  I think I'll give RH 7.2 a shot and when I can get a really decent box, I want to give RH 8 a try.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions, and maybe someone out there will benefit from my little disaster here.

Jim

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