After having messed with /tmp permission, startx leads to a black screen with moveable mouse pointer (a X icon). Whatever i do gets no reactions from GNOME. Starting X as root would still give me a working gnome-session, so i made some tweaking and eventually traced the problem to my user missing +w on /tmp. I lost 2 hours to sort this out, so i think GNOME should report a clear error. I just emerged gnome 2.8, but i believe older versions are affected as well. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. # chown root: /tmp && chmod 0700 /tmp 2. $ startx Actual Results: black screen Expected Results: see my gnome desktop
i believe you should leave messing with your /tmp permissions to your distro, it is in no way gnome's responsibility to check on your particulars system setup.
You're mixing cause and effect. the fact tmp permission was the cause is irrelevant to the fact gnome here lacks proper error handling. The bug is a blank screen and no clue about what happened where other programs would say "permission denied".
no, i'm not mixing anything. If you read my comment i stated that pebcak reporting is not part of the gnome equation afaic.
