Error message at login screen, etc..

[Jerry]

Problems with 5.8 SOHO (disc received in mail):

- screen resolution remains at 1024x768 despite installing 915resolution
and editing xorg.conf file with 1280x800 in the mode lines, etc [edit]:
RESOLVED

- wifi radar suddenly fails to start up from the menu or from an icon I
placed in the panel;  the "root passward" applet comes up, but nothing
happens after entering my pw.. it was working fine for a while [edit]:
the other utilities for the wifi connection do work, but wifi radar will
not even invoke at all after entering the password

- after about the 3rd or 4th reboot/restart I now get a persistant error
message on the login screen, prior to the login area showing, saying,
"/opt/kde/share/kdm/~glass~ couldn't start," so I click "ok" on that
applet and the login screen shows and works.

This is a fresh install on a hard disk by itself from a 5.8 SOHO disc
received in the mail, not a burn of my own. 

The OS seems to have gotten unstable for some reason, aside from
the screen resolution problem.

This is a new Acer Aspire 5610z notebook computer.

Anyone else seen these behaviors?  Help is appreciated.

  - Jerry

[caitlyn]

- after about the 3rd or 4th reboot/restart I now get a persistant error
message on the login screen, prior to the login area showing, saying,
"/opt/kde/share/kdm/~glass~ couldn't start," so I click "ok" on that
applet and the login screen shows and works.

It's looking for a KDE theme that doesn't exist.  Changing your KDE theme should solve this problem.

- wifi radar suddenly fails to start up from the menu or from an icon I
placed in the panel;  the "root passward" applet comes up, but nothing
happens after entering my pw.. it was working fine for a while [edit]:
the other utilities for the wifi connection do work, but wifi radar will
not even invoke at all after entering the password

In a terminal window as root start wifi-radar and let us know what error message you see.  That will help one of us to troubleshoot the problem for you.

[Jerry]

Ok, I'll do that (I'm not on that machine right now).

I wanted to mention that there's a new kink in that little problem:  it works but it's just not
showing up on my screen.    That is, I start wifi radar and never see it, but I'm connected! 

[caitlyn]

That doesn't mean wifi-radar ever ran.  If you have proper settings for your wireless card (configured through wifi-radar previously, vasm, etc...) and you have wireless set to start automatically at boot it will continue to work.  What wifi-radar does is allow you to find networks, configure for them, and connect.  If you need to change networks and wifi-radar isn't running you can still find networks with command line tools and still configure either at the command line or with vasm.  wifi-radar isn't an essential piece, just a very nice, convenient, user friendly front end.

[Jerry]

That doesn't mean wifi-radar ever ran.  If you have proper settings for your wireless card (configured through wifi-radar previously, vasm, etc...) and you have wireless set to start automatically at boot it will continue to work.  What wifi-radar does is allow you to find networks, configure for them, and connect.  If you need to change networks and wifi-radar isn't running you can still find networks with command line tools and still configure either at the command line or with vasm.  wifi-radar isn't an essential piece, just a very nice, convenient, user friendly front end.

If I don't run either vwifi or wifi radar I am not connected (the browser won't go to a website and ping does
not work, etc..).

With vwifi I see the terminal screen and applet which asks for the network name.  With wifi radar I see nothing.

[caitlyn]

So wifi-radar does run now?  I'm not at all clear on that.  Again, you need to open a terminal session, become root, and run wifi-radar from there so that the error messages are clearly displayed.  That's the only way anyone is going to figure out what's going on unless errors are being written to a log.

[Jerry]

So wifi-radar does run now?  I'm not at all clear on that.  Again, you need to open a terminal session, become root, and run wifi-radar from there so that the error messages are clearly displayed.  That's the only way anyone is going to figure out what's going on unless errors are being written to a log.

Ok, I'll be on that computer later.

No, wifi radar does not show up on the screen for some reason.  But vwifi allows me to connect. 

I'm going to get on that machine now and try to run wifi radar from the terminal.

[Jerry]

Ok, I just ran "wifi-radar" as su in terminal and got no error messages.  Wifi Radar
did not come up, but there are no error messages.  I connected via vwifi right away.

[caitlyn]

That is too weird and I'm out of ideas.  Are there any errors in your system log?

There is an updated wifi-radar 1.9.8 package in the testing repository.  You could try that.

-Cait

[Jerry]

That is too weird and I'm out of ideas.  Are there any errors in your system log?

There is an updated wifi-radar 1.9.8 package in the testing repository.  You could try that.

-Cait

Hey, how simple and silly of me not to think of both of those things. 

I'll check the system log.  Depending on what I see I'll probably end up doing a
reinstall of wifi radar.

I'll post about it after I do that.. thanks again for helping me out.  As it is it's only
a few clicks to get my wifi connection, it's just that I don't like broken things in
my OS.