Cannot start icewm from the login page

[Barry Fishman]

Binary package hint: gdm

When I select icewm or IceWM from the login screen and enter my password the screen goes black, and the
login screen restarts. I get the following in my .xsession-errors:

/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
Setting IM through im-switch for locale=en_US.
Start IM through /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL linked to /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default.
icewm-session: using /home2/barry/.icewm for private configuration files
icewmbg: using /home2/barry/.icewm for private configuration files
icewmtray: using /home2/barry/.icewm for private configuration files
IceWM: using /home2/barry/.icewm for private configuration files
XIO: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0"
      after 136 requests (131 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0"
      after 129 requests (129 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0"
      after 122 requests (122 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
icewmbg: Can't open display: :0. X must be running and $DISPLAY set.

However if I select blackbox from the gdm login screen it will start, and then I can rightclik and from the
logout menu select to start icewm. Icewm will then come up correctly.

My system was updated today 11-Apr-2011 and:
% uname -a
Linux ecube 2.6.38-8-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 11 03:31:24 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
% apt-cache policy icewm
icewm:
  Installed: 1.3.7~pre2-1
  Candidate: 1.3.7~pre2-1
  Version table:
 *** 1.3.7~pre2-1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

This has been a problem for a while.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: gdm 2.32.1-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Apr 11 10:30:39 2011
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gdm
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Barry Fishman (barry-fishman)]

I have a ATI Radeon HD 4670 Graphics Card, and was running the free radeon driver.

I just updated to the proprietary fglrx driver, and thinks work correctly now.

[Barry Fishman (barry-fishman)]

I spoke too soon in the last message. I tried this morning to login with IceWM and failed
in all attempts. I added a 5 second sleep to /etc/gdm/Xsession, thinking it might be that
the server did not have enough time to initialize, but had the same result.

I put a 'set +x' at the start of /etc/gdm/Xsession and have attached the resulting
.xsession-errors file, for a new user with no .profile or .X* files.

[Barry Fishman (barry-fishman)]

I built the upstream icewm 1.3 branch (under fedora 15) and it also failed. I traced the problem
to icewmbg crashing the X server.

Since the problem exists on multiple distributions (and cvs head) and both free and proprietary
ATI drivers, I submitted a upstream bug report:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3289566&group_id=31&atid=10003

[Bob Barry (bobb40)]

The fault is in icewmbg, but to work around it:

  - delete or rename /usr/bin/icewmbg
  - create /usr/local/bin/icewmbg, containing:
      #!/bin/sh
      xsetroot -solid steelblue
      # colors are defined in /usr/share/X11/rgb.txt
  - sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/icewmbg

Many other utilities (xview, etc) may be used similarly.

[francesco bat (nerobat2004)]

I solved in this way !
Thank you very much ;-)
Bye
Francesco bat

[i (iiiiii-deactivatedaccount)]

By the way, both icewm or IceWM run icewm-session. There's a bug for that in Debian: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=605926

[i (iiiiii-deactivatedaccount)]

I use Debian sid (not Ubuntu) and this issue is currently happening with icewmbg and with 'pcmanfm --desktop' (git version). It happens with other display managers as well like wdm and slim and with gdm only if gnome-settings-daemon is installed.
Starting the session with startx prevents this bug.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=626331

[Frank_McCormick (beacon-videotron)]

This also affects Ubuntu Natty in my case - IceWm alone runs fine but IceWm-session crashes...UNLESS it is the first WM run in a boot, then it runs fine. Yes, it's weird. The problem seems to be with Icewmbg.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Barry Fishman (barry-fishman)]

I've moved to Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) which does not have the problem.