Newbie Fubared Gnome Install

W

wmichaelb

Hi: I'm pretty much a complete newbie on FreeBSD. I had some good experiences with PC-BSD, and so wanted to try Gnome on FreeBSD. I edited rc.conf to go into Gnome at boot. But now, when I boot, the system goes directly to the Gnome screen...but without the upper panel or any access to the applications or a login, for that matter. All I have is the background screen, the lower panel, and a box in the middle showing a computer icon with a title that switches between my ISP and FreePSD 7.3, and two buttons labeled "reboot" and "leave"...but neither one works.

Other than reinstalling and trying again, does anyone have any suggestions? :r
Thanks in advance.
 
It sounds like you don't have procfs mounted. I'm pretty sure GDM requires procfs these days, though the FAQ only mentions it as part of the keyring setup:

Why do I need confirm access to my keyring every time Nautilus tries to open an external share?

You did not mount the procfs file system. Procfs is not mounted by default in recent releases of FreeBSD. Consider adding the following line to your /etc/fstab file:
Code: 
proc           /proc       procfs  rw  0   0
Click to expand...
 
Beastie: my apologies. The machine is an Acer 3 GHz P4, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB HD, with no other PCI cards installed.

I installed FreeBSD 7.3 from CD's, rather than 8.0, because some of the ports I tried to install on my PC-BSD 8.0 system were apparently not available for the newest release of FreeBSD. I did a full install to the complete disk, and that seemed to go flawlessly. I then installed gnome:

pkg_add -r gnome2

The install ran for about an hour with a full time DSL connection, and seemed to go well. I then added the pico editor from the third CD and used it to add the line

Code: 
gnome_enable="YES"

to my /etc/rc.conf file. I then rebooted, and as noted above, got the green leaf screen, but without the upper Gnome panel nor any way to log in - or out, other than by simply shutting off the machine; there is only the one box with two buttons, one for reboot and one for shut down. Neither button does anyhting when clicked on. When I force the machine off and reboot, Gnome tries to load, and does so before I can log in from the console prompt. Clearly I have missed something in the install, and I haven't been able to figure out what from the FreeBSD/Gnome documentation.

I have some experience with Linux, OSX, Windows, and PC-BSD, but FreeBSD is a different beast. Any suggestions would be welcome, and thanks in advance.
 
When at that green leaf screen press Ctrl-Alt-F2, login as root and edit /etc/fstab as atomicplayboy recommended.
Some info about Gnome is here
 
To all: the key was ctrl-alt-f2; once I could log in, I could get access to an editor, and edit fstab as noted. Now, all seems to work well.

I could add Gnome to my PC-BSD machine, but I'm really interested in learning more about how this OS works, and wanted a full FreeBSD install to work with. I found an inexpensive machine on my local Craigslist, and so here we are.

Many thanks to all!
 
wmichaelb said:
I could add Gnome to my PC-BSD machine, but I'm really interested in learning more about how this OS works, and wanted a full FreeBSD install to work with. I found an inexpensive machine on my local Craigslist, and so here we are.

Many thanks to all!
Click to expand...

Cool ;)
 
Thank you all. I, too, am a newbie to freeBSD. I have just successfully installed a dual boot windows 7 and freeBSD 9.1 amd64 release from an .iso burned dvd on my 17.3 inch toshiba satellite L770 laptop with 4GB of ram, 600GB hd, and i3 intel processor. It is threads like these that give me direction and let me know how to proceed. I probably will need someone to walk me through setting up X and setting up a desktop environment. Thank you all once again and in advance.
 
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