On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 7:41 PM, Mihai Moldovan <ionic@ionic.de> wrote:
On 10.04.2015 12:53 AM, Michael DePaulo wrote:
This brings up an issue with our documentation though. We should document (probably on our wiki) that a user's .bashrc / .profile / .bash_profile file can interfere with X2Go. Perhaps we should update the error message in x2goclient also.
Well... this coin has two sides, as always.
X2Go Server's Xsession script sources ${HOME}/.profile. The "default" Xsession script provided in Debian as /etc/X11/Xsession does not. On the other hand, GDM, LightDM and other login managers would have been running into the same problem and not been able to start any desktop environment, because they all also source ~/.profile.
Doing questionable stuff in ~/.*profile or ~/.*rc will always lead to problems. But putting that on the wiki is like adding "Deleting /etc/passwd might cause problems with X2Go" there. It sure will - but that's not an insulated X2Go problem.
Mihai
Most beginner Linux sysadmins know that bad things will happen if you delete /etc/passwd. Very few beginner Linux sysadmins know that your desktop environment might not start if you have weird syntax in ~/.*profile or ~/.*rc . A moderately skilled Linux sysadmin who rarely uses a GUI is unlikely to know about this also.
So I think we should document it somewhere on the wiki, perhaps under a troubleshooting section.
Also, a more helpful error message might still be worth implementing.
-Mike#2