[gentoo-user] kdm wierdness

[John Blinka]

Hi, all,

I have been using the kdm graphical login for all my gentoo machines
for a very long time without any problems - except for the past few
months on one machine.  On this machine, the first login after booting
always fails.  All subsequent logins succeed.  More specifically, after
I try to
log in following a boot, the kdm login window disappears for the better
part of a minute, followed by a brief black screen, then followed by a
kdm login window and background.  Logging in again produces my usual
xfce4 window manager without any delay.  Logging in to a kde-3.5 session
instead of xfce4 produces the same behavior, except that the delay
during the first login attempt is many minutes.  It's as if kdm were trying
to start an xfce4 or kde-3.5 session, but couldn't, then redisplays the
kdm login window after the failure.  It seems as if the initial failure to
start a session clears out whatever it is that prevents the session from
starting, so that subsequent login attempts start sessions successfully.

This behavior is actually an improvement from about a month ago.
At that time X would crash after the initial login attempt.  I learned that
logging into the console as root and restarting kdm would allow
successful graphical logins after that initial crash.

Any ideas about what to do?  The logs have never contained any error
messages about the problem.

John Blinka
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