Using Backtrack 4.

Desktop GUI works for all users except root.

For root, after I type

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$ startx

the screen goes blank. If I type "Ctrl-Alt-F1" I get back to a CLI. If I *don't* type Ctrl-C to get to a command line, but type "Ctrl-Alt-F7" I get to a completely functional GUI for root (weird ).

My root home directory is /root, but I found that my "Desktop" folder was located at /home/root

I copied /home/root/Desktop to this location: /root/Desktop

When I rebooted and typed

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$ startx

the GUI actually started up like normal. However, the reason must be that somehow /home/root/Desktop was again automatically generated. However, when I closed the GUI and restarted it I was back to square one.

All of my directories are correct at these locations:

Settings->System Administration->Paths

~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

So why does /home/root/Desktop get automatically generated? How do I force kde to look where it is supposed to (~/Desktop)?

not a solution but if you if you create a symbolic link from /home/root/Desktop to /root/Desktop things may function in the interim, but /root/desktop can't exist at the time the ln command is executed?

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ln -s /home/root/Desktop /root/Desktop

Note: it's not considered good form (for security) to login as root.

could this be a quirk of the *buntus? as normally there is not a root account created?

OK, thanks for coming back with suggestions. However, I tried the symbolic link and behavior was still the same. That is,

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$ startx

gives me a blank screen when commanded as root. However, the audio startup sound plays and kde has started up, it is just that the screen is blank.

Then I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 and I see the text screen, then I hit Ctrl-Alt-F7 and I'm in business with the kde GUI as root.

By the way, the reason I'm running this as root is because when I run kde as a user, I could't do root functions such as create a new user. I even found the command (users-admin) and issued it like

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$ sudo users-admin

but the 'unlock' button is not enabled and I can't edit or add a user. I must start kde as 'root' user to do so.

Anyway, here is a bit more info, I saw these two errors when I first hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 after the blank screen as root

/usr/bin/xmodmap: unable to open file '/usr/share/apps/kxkb/ubuntu.xmodmap' for reading
/usr/bin/xmodmap: unable to open file '/root/.Xmodmap' for reading

I have already found ubuntu-kde.xmodmap and commanded

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$ cp /usr/share/apps/kxkb/ubuntu-kde.xmodmap /usr/share/apps/kxkb/ubuntu.xmodmap


so the first error went away, but I still have the second. After which it says

/sur/bin/xmodmap: 1 error encountered, aborting.

I found several files labelled "xmodmap" (all lower case) but none in user directories, and they all run kde fine.

So how do I fix the .Xmodmap error? How do I get root's Desktop working correctly?

bump

The Xmodmap error wouldn't affect the KDE startup procedure and can be ignored. My recommendation would be to check the contents of ~/.xsession-errors after root fails to login.

Thanks for the reply. However,

.xsession-errors

does not exist anywhere (except under one of the users from a few weeks ago - and that user's kde works fine).

To recap the problem, when I command

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$ startx

after booting up kde appears to run, I hear the boot-up sound for example. But right after entering "startx" the screen goes blank, and completely powers off.

I type ctrl-alt-F1 and get back to the CLI. Before typing anything else, I can type ctrl-alt-F7 and my root kde is running fine!

How can I fix this?

Unfortunately I'm not sure why this is occurring. My guess is that somewhere (possibly in the compositing stack, but it could be anywhere) isn't designed to handle the user logging in as root (which isn't a recommend practice in any case)