Issues getting Gnome environment running properly

[Aspire]

I'm fairly new to OpenBSD, having dabbled with it in the past.

I run an older laptop in my shed, mostly for web browsing, and opening PDF service manuals etc.

The laptop is an old (2006) Acer Aspire 5672WLMI, which originally shipped with XP MCE. I've run various OSs on it over the years, most recently Linux Mint 19.3 XFCE, which works well.

That said, the Mint crew are (understandably) deprecating support for the 1386 architecture (from 2023, at least), so I thought I'd have a crack on getting OpenBSD up and running on that box, using another HDD.

It installs without issue. I've added Gnome and Gnome-extras, again without issue. Made the appropriate changes (disable xenodm, add the appropriate daemons to rc.conf.local etc.). and it seems to boot fine.

When it gets to the login prompt and starts the GUI, it "seems" to land briefly on the default Window manager that OpenBSD ships with, then goes to a black screen, and then reappears with the Gnome login screen.

I click on the username. When I begin entering the password, it goes back to a black screen, and then the Gnome login screen reappears. If I then click on the username, it hangs, and gives me what can best be described as it's best impression of the Win10 "sad face" BSOD, with a message like "Something has gone wrong. Please contact your system administrator".

Naturally, I can ctrl+alt+F1 to go to another TTY session, and login to the system from there, but am wondering where in the config steps I've stuffed up...


A couple of notes:

There "is" no xorg.conf. Does it need to be manually created from scratch?

Also, from dmesg, it "appears" as though the wrong video driver for my graphics card (an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400). It loads an R300 driver, whereas it should be loading an RV505/RV515/RV516/RV550, s noted in the OpenBSD doco about these cards.

I've no idea if (or even if it's possible) to run an X config-type tool in OpenBSD these days. (Much of the documentation is well out of date).

Does anyone have some clues about how I might troubleshoot the GUI issues?

Oh, and while we're here can someone point me in the direction of a howto regarding getting Samba up and going? I run Linux machines on the network, and have no issues configuring fstab to mount windows shares. I don't think the syntax is the same in OpenBSD, though, so a guide showing any differences would be helpful. I have, of course, installed Samba on the box.

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome!

Originally Posted by Aspire

When it gets to the login prompt and starts the GUI, it "seems" to land briefly on the default Window manager that OpenBSD ships with, then goes to a black screen, and then reappears with the Gnome login screen.

Are you certain that xenodm(1) has been disabled? If you're seeing xenodm() images, you might have two display managers running in conflict. Inspect the contents of /etc/rc.conf.local to be sure you've disabled it.

I click on the username. When I begin entering the password, it goes back to a black screen, and then the Gnome login screen reappears. If I then click on the username, it hangs, and gives me what can best be described as it's best impression of the Win10 "sad face" BSOD, with a message like "Something has gone wrong. Please contact your system administrator".

To my recollection, Gnome requires 3D hardware acceleration video, and the contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log may help if there is a video card or X Windows issue.

There "is" no xorg.conf. Does it need to be manually created from scratch?

No. But you may need some /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ fragment files to correct or augment X Windows automatic provisioning.

Also, from dmesg, it "appears" as though the wrong video driver for my graphics card (an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400). It loads an R300 driver, whereas it should be loading an RV505/RV515/RV516/RV550, s noted in the OpenBSD doco about these cards.

The dmesg(8) report shows what the kernel understands about your hardware. The Xorg log file noted above will show what X Windows understands about your hardware, and which driver(s) it applies.

I've no idea if (or even if it's possible) to run an X config-type tool in OpenBSD these days. (Much of the documentation is well out of date).

Which documentation is out-of-date? There's an i386-specific README file in /usr/X11R6/ which should point you to initial provisioning man pages. As for automated production of an xorg.conf(5) file -- the -configure option has been gone from the X server binaries for many years.

Does anyone have some clues about how I might troubleshoot the GUI issues?

Start with examining your daemon provisioning file /etc/rc.conf.local and your Xorg log file, as noted above.

Oh, and while we're here can someone point me in the direction of a howto regarding getting Samba up and going? I run Linux machines on the network, and have no issues configuring fstab to mount windows shares. I don't think the syntax is the same in OpenBSD, though, so a guide showing any differences would be helpful. I have, of course, installed Samba on the box.

I don't use Samba. There is some OpenBSD-specific provisioning guidance in /usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/samba.

[Aspire]

Thanks for that, much appreciated.

I think you hit the nail on the head, on possibly two fronts.

I'd issued the command "rcctl disable xenodm", but hadn't checked to see whether the /etc/rc.conf.local file reflected this.

The second issue is, I believe, most pertinent. (3D acceleration). From what I gather, my card doesn't support it, and I believe that one is not resolvable.

I'm going to try another Window manager (XFCE) - most likely off a fresh install, to see if that works.

Again, I really appreciate the response.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Originally Posted by Aspire

The second issue is, I believe, most pertinent. (3D acceleration). From what I gather, my card doesn't support it, and I believe that one is not resolvable.

Why do you think that? Have you read drm(4)?

I have a Ryzen 2500U with a Vega 8 iGPU which is less than a year old and hardware acceleration is fully supported under -current.

EDIT: if you have an NVIDIA card then you're using the wrong operating system

[jggimi]

Since you've raised the point I found the specs for Aspire's laptop. This is a 1 GB RAM (4 GB max), 32-bit-only Core Duo (T2300) laptop with a Radeon Mobility X1400 video chipset.

I'm not familiar with this particular video hardware, but it appears to be supported by the X.org radeon(4) driver and I expect therefore the radeondrm(4) i386 kernel driver. I recall the kernel driver requires radeondrm firmware, installed manually with fw_update(8) if not already installed.

[bradley]

I installed OpenBSD on my girlfriend's old laptop, which is a similar older aspire model with Intel GPU. These machines are oldies but goldies. The track button between the two mouse buttons is really useful.

If you upgrade your BIOS, you could even use it with an Intel T7200 or I think even T7600 64 bit CPU. If you max out the RAM, the 945 pm chipset will unfortunately have the limitation that only less than 4 GB will be usable. Upgrading the HDD, cleaning the fan and new thermalpaste can give it new life. This dual core model here plays huge fullHD movies without issues.

As for the login issue, never used Gnome, so don't know about the details there. If the issue is still there, I can check some config files.