[Foresight-distro] Re: Foresight VMware appl not coming up in GUI

[John Douglas Porter]

Well, I grabbed the xorg.conf.vmware from
http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder/repos/foresight/troveInfo?t=xorg-conf-vmware
and copied it to xorg.conf,
and now X (GDM) starts up just fine.

The next problem I encountered was that there are no users preconfigured
with which to log in at the gdm login screen.
"root" doesn't work; it just dumps you back to the username prompt.
Any other username entered, will take you to the password prompt but
that will subsequently fail.
Looking at the /etc/passwd file, it does appear that there are no
login-able users.   (This is a bug, imho.)

To create a user with which to log in, one presumably needs to log
in as root and run useradd.

One way to get to a console prompt where one can log in as root
is to use the Ctrl-Alt-F1 "escape" sequence at the GDM screen.
However, in VMware, Ctrl-Alt is captured by the VMware box.
To prevent this, one can easily re-defined the jump-out hot key
sequence for VMware.  Probably the easiest way to do this is to
add the following lines to one's VMware preferences file:

pref.hotkey.shift = "true"
pref.hotkey.control = "true"
pref.hotkey.alt = "true"

This makes the jump-out hot key comination be Ctrl-Alt-Shift.
(For Windows users, the VMware preferences file is
"%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\preferences.ini")

Hope this helps someone in the future.
-- 
John Douglas Porter


----- Original Message ----
> From: John Douglas Porter <johndporter at yahoo.com>
> To: Ken VanDine <ken at rpath.com>
> Cc: foresight-distro at lists.rpath.org
> Sent: Sunday, May 4, 2008 7:35:48 PM
> Subject: [Foresight-distro] Re: Foresight VMware appl not coming up in GUI
> 
> 
> xorg.conf is empty (zero size).
> The date on the file is 2006-03-06.
> 
> Possibly related, I found this note in the April 2007
> edition of the Foresight Linux Newsletter
> 
> https://wiki.foresightlinux.org/display/newsletter/2007/04/29/Foresight+Linux+Newsletter+Volume+1%2C+Issue+2+%28April+2007%29
> 
> "Xorg updates:  Released to testing is the latest testing version of
> X.org, 1.3, also known as 7.3.  The major news with Xorg 1.3 is the
> removal of the xorg.conf file, Xorg 1.3 now installs your hardware
> dynamically."
> 
> Well, if that's true, it's not working with virtual hardware. Or whatever.
> The VMware instance of Foresight Linux DOES NOT START X.
> 
> Still don't quite get how this could have gone out the door...
> 
> -- 
> John D. Porter
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Ken VanDine 
> > To: John Douglas Porter 
> > Cc: foresight-distro at lists.rpath.org
> > Sent: Friday, May 2, 2008 10:45:17 AM
> > Subject: Re: [Foresight-distro]  Foresight VMware appl not coming up in GUI
> > 
> > Mind trying to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, replacing "vesa" with "vmware".
> > Does that work?
> > 
> > --Ken
> > 
> > On Fri, 2008-05-02 at 07:02 -0700, John Douglas Porter wrote:
> > > Hi. I just grabbed the Foresight VMware appliance from 
> > > http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder/project/foresight/
> > > 
> > > And when I boot it, it just leaves me at a console login
> > > prompt. 
> > > 
> > > After a minute or so, a message hits the console including
> > > the following text:
> > > 
> > > Data incomplete in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> > >         At least one Device section is required.
> > > (EE) Error parsing the config file
> > > 
> > > Fatal server error:
> > > no screens found
> > > 
> > > Failed to start the X server
> > > 
> > > and so on.
> > > It seems a bit odd to me that a ready-to-run VMware
> > > instance of Linux would be published in this condition.
> > > 
> > > Advice?
> > > 
> > > thanks,
> > > John D. Porter
> > > 
> > > 
> > >      
> > 
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> 
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