[rhelv6-list] Gnome - KDE Desktop switching in RHEL6

[Horst Severini]

Hi again,

quick update: it turns out that the problem I thought I had didn't 
actually exist ...  !!! !@#$%^&*

The issue seems to be that only after you enter a username on the GDM 
login screen and press Enter -- only THEN does the desktop switcher tool
appear at the bottom of the screen!!! I realized that today when I logged 
in to one of the machines I hadn't switched yet.

Is that really necessary to hide this option like that, which made me
waste a week's worth of trying to figure out a problem that doesn't
even exist? Hrmph ... :\

Cheers,

	Horst

Horst Severini <hs at nhn.ou.edu> wrote:

> Hi Hugh and Gianluca,
>
> > gdm uses the *.desktop files in /usr/share/xsessions to determine
> > which choices to make available at login time.
> > /usr/share/xsessions/kdm.desktop is owned by the kdebase-workspace rpm
> > which is part of the kde-desktop yum group.
> >
> > If the file is there, I'd make sure the permissions are correct on it.
>
> Hmm, that file exists and has the same ownership and permissions as 
> gnome.desktop, so I don't think that's the problem.
>
> But after I created /etc/sysconfig/desktop with
>
> DISPLAYMANAGER=KDE
>
> and restart X, then it did come up with KDM instead of GDM, 
> and there I do have the options to switch back and forward 
> between KDE and Gnome, so that's great!
>
> I still don't understand why I don't see the option to switch in GDM, 
> but hey, at least I have a working setup now!
>
> Thanks a lot,
>
>        Horst
>
> Gianluca Cecchi <gianluca.cecchi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 12:06 AM, Horst Severini wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > we are working on upgrading our desktop cluster from RHEL5 to RHEL6, and we
> > > think we have a workable solution that involves bringing up the new machines
> > > with ROCKS 6.1 and the RHEL 6.5 ISO, and then doing some post-config via
> > > scripts, but when we do that, we only have Gnome available at the login
> > > screen, and we can't figure out how to make KDE available as well.
> > >
> > > We have all the KDE RPMs installed (that I know of), via
> > >
> > > yum groupinstall "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"
> > >
> > > and I have compared the list of installed RPMs with one RHEL6 test install
> > > we did manually, and I can't figure out what's missing, since everything
> > > that looks like it's even remotely related to KDE and desktop switching is
> > > already installed, so I don't know why the ROCKS installed machines don't
> > > show the desktop switcher box at the bottom of the login screen.
> > >
> > > I tried googling around, but haven't quite found the right page yet.
> > > What are we missing?
> >
> >
> > What worked for me on a CentOS 6.5 install where I had only Gnome and
> > init level was 5 by default:
> >
> > sudo yum groupinstall "KDE Desktop"
> >
> > verify you have kdm executable (in practice the kdm rpm package)
> > vi /etc/sysconfig/desktop (is not present by default)
> >
> > put into it the single line
> > DISPLAYMANAGER=KDE
> >
> > $ sudo init 3
> > $ sudo init 5
> >
> > and I get kde diplay manager.
> >
> > take into account that display manager in 6.5 is managed by upstart
> > init script prefdm.conf in /etc/init directory
> >
> > and at the end it runs
> > exec /etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon
> >
> > and prefdm contains:
> >
> > if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/desktop ]; then
> >         . /etc/sysconfig/desktop
> >         if [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = GNOME ]; then
> >                 preferred=/usr/sbin/gdm
> >                 quit_arg="--retain-splash"
> >         elif [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = KDE ]; then
> >                 preferred=/usr/bin/kdm
> > ....
> >
> > Otherwise some lines below it contains:
> > # Fallbacks, in order
> > exec gdm "$@" >/dev/null 2>&1 </dev/null
> > exec kdm "$@" >/dev/null 2>&1 </dev/null
> >
> > so you can comment out the one starting with gdm and it will start kdm
> > if it finds it...
> >
> > If you like a display manager not managed by prefdm you have to create
> > a prefdm.override in /etc/init and put there your display manager
> > commands/options
> >
> > HIH,
> > Gianluca
> >
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