Gdm won't start after updates on FC5

[Jim Cornette]

Nigel Henry wrote:


> Hi Jim. This whole problem seems to have been caused by updates having 
> installed another version of librsvg2, so I ended up with.
> librsvg2     2.14.4-1.fc5.1      (the correct one)
> and
> librsvg2    2.14.2-1    (an earlier version, which shows up on the versions 
> list in synaptic)

I had a version with fc5 left on my system along with the fc6 version 
installed via a yum upgrade to fc6. I removed only the database entry 
with rpm.

> 
> No third party repo's were involved in the updates, just the 3 which came with 
> apt (core, updates, and extras).
> 
> I could not remove the earlier version, and kept getting a transaction failed 
> because part of the removal meant getting access 
> to /etc/gtk-2.0/i686-redhat-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf.loaders, and the transaction 
> failed message said it was looking for the gdk-pixbuf.loaders file 
> in /etc/gtk-2.0/i386-redhat-linux-gnu.
> 
> To remove the earlier version of librsvg2, I've had to create a link 
> in /etc/gtk-2.0 to trick synaptic into thinking that "i386-redhat-linux-gnu" 
> exists.

For future reference, the program rpm has options to force package 
removal, just remove the database entry, install older versions of 
packages. This is probably better than needing to make links. It worked 
for you, so the end result matters most.

> #cd /etc/gtk-2.0
> ln -s i686-redhat-linux-gnu i386-redhat-linux-gnu
> 
> Now librsvg 2.14.2-1  removes ok, and I think I'll leave the link there for 
> the time being in case there are any more problems.

To be sure that some of the files needed for the version left installed 
were not removed with removing the dual version of librsvg2, you might 
want to rpm -qV librsvg2 for this package to see if anything fails the 
test. If the results come back blank, it verified OK.
If it is missing any files, rpm has options such as --replacefiles and 
--replacepkgs which will overwrite any files with the package content 
ones. This will fix the package to being complete.

> 
> Prior to doing the above removal, I'd removed gdm, and next time I booted I 
> got a different display manager, a plain blue one with Fedora on it, but no 
> bubbles, and the login box in the centre of the screen. I'm presuming it is 
> kdm.

There is gdm, kdm and xdm. If you installed the default software, kdm is 
not installed, you probably are seeing xdm. It is plain but does its job 
with no frills.

> 
> I've still got to try reinstalling gdm, to see if it works now, but I'm not 
> too bothered, because at least I have a login screen.

That's what matters.

> 
> Thanks for your help.
No problem.
> 
> Nigel.
> 


-- 
Obviously I was either onto something, or on something.
              -- Larry Wall on the creation of Perl