Les Mikesell wrote: > On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 2:40 PM, Michael Hennebry > <hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote: >> On Wed, 30 Oct 2013, Les Mikesell wrote: >> >>> On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Michael Hennebry >>> <hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote: >>>> >>>> gdm hangs. >>> [...] >>>> user had insufficient privilege >>> >>> That likely means that the pid file for the process you are about to >>> start exists in /var/run/ but it is unreadable. You should be running >>> as root at that point, so that's odd, but maybe you have file system >>> corruption or some other cruft there. I don't think should cause a >>> hang, though. If you switch to a virtual console can you tell what >>> process is hung and see what strace says it is waiting for? >> >> I know what strace does, but where should I use it? > > Either ssh in from somewhere else or log in on a virtual terminal > (e.g. alt+F2) so you still have access if the main console hangs when > you 'telinit 5'. Use ps in the other session to see if you can find > the hung process and then 'strace -p pid' will show if it is waiting > for some system call to complete. > > Does 'startx' work at the console from runlevel 3? Interesting question: can you run xinit with twm? How about kde? mark