Login Problem

[brad.mugleston at comcast.net]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Rick Stevens wrote:

> brad.mugleston at comcast.net wrote:
> > Rick and gang,
> > 
> > I  lost the origional email so I'm going to repeat myself here.
> > 
> > I changed the resolution on my screen and now the graphical login 
> > screen is all waco -the characters are about 1/4 screen high.
> > 
> > Rick suggested I do the following from a standard console
> > 
> > "kill `pidof gdm`"
> > 
> > "telinit 3" then "telinit 5"
> > 
> > reboot
> > 
> > I tried that and got an error on the "Kill" I did it with and 
> > with out the single quote "`" (the one next to the #1 key).  With 
> > out the single quote I got gdm not found.
> 
> The "`" are called "graves" and yes, they're next to the 1 key.  Those
> cause the shell to run the command enclosed in the graves and return the
> data spit to stdout to the rest of the command.  So
> 
> 	kill `pidof gdm`
> 
> first causes the shell to run "pidof gdm" (which displays the process ID
> of the "gdm" program).  The PID is passed to "kill" to shut down gdm.
> Since the /etc/inittab has a "respawn" on gdm, it will restart.
> 
> > I did the other commands anyway but it did not fix the 
> > login screen.  The desktop screen is fine.
> 
> Weird.  Did you check the logs in /var/log/gdm?
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

OK I re-tried it with the graves and got the following message, 
as root, 

kill: usage: kill .......

the file /var/log/gdm/:0.log ends with these lines

GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 94500
GetModeLine - hdsp: 1024 hbeg: 1072 hend: 1168 httl: 1376
              vdsp: 768 vbeg: 769 vend: 772 vttl: 808 flags: 5
GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 94500
GetModeLine - hdsp: 1024 hbeg: 1072 hend: 1168 httl: 1376
              vdsp: 768 vbeg: 769 vend: 772 vttl: 808 flags: 5
GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 94500
GetModeLine - hdsp: 1024 hbeg: 1072 hend: 1168 httl: 1376
              vdsp: 768 vbeg: 769 vend: 772 vttl: 808 flags: 5
GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 94500
GetModeLine - hdsp: 1024 hbeg: 1072 hend: 1168 httl: 1376
              vdsp: 768 vbeg: 769 vend: 772 vttl: 808 flags: 5
(END)

If, as root, I do a "pidof gdm" I get nothing back.  If I do it 
as a user or su I get command not found.

For once I am able to be at my machine during the day - I'm 
building a brick wall in my yard so I'll be in and out.

Thanks

Brad