Bug 71114

Summary:	GNOME starts with just a black screen and a moveable mouse pointer when user has no write access to /tmp
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Federico Galassi <federico>
Component:	[OLD] GNOME	Assignee:	Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team <gnome>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID
Severity:	normal
Priority:	High
Version:	2004.2
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Federico Galassi 2004-11-13 19:29:55 UTC

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

Comment 1 foser (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2004-11-14 02:39:25 UTC

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.

Comment 2 Federico Galassi 2004-11-14 08:20:11 UTC

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".

Comment 3 foser (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2004-11-14 08:33:24 UTC

no, i'm not mixing anything. If you read my comment i stated that pebcak reporting is not part of the gnome equation afaic.