KDM Fails to Login in FreeBSD

After installing FreeBSD 7.1/amd64, X and KDE4, I finally decided to try using a display manager and I went with KDM (instead of simply XDM). It ran successfully but whenever I tried to login, the KDM would take my login and then throw me back at the login screen.

Just to get started, here's what you need to do to install it:
1) In /etc/ttys change the XDM line to
# ttyv8 "/usr/local/kde4/bin/kdm -nodaemon" xterm on secure

2) Link for session manager
# ln -s ~/.xinitrc ~/.xsession

3) Restart ttys
# kill -HUP 1

You should have the login screen (KDM) up and running...and here's where the problem happened. This was the error message I was getting

Apr 11 13:01:28 media kdm-bin: :0[1131]: Cannot open ConsoleKit session: Unable to open session: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory

I still haven't tracked the exact cause of the issue but if you enable dbus with the Gnome Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) then KDM will work.

1) Add to /etc/rc.conf
# dbus_enable="YES"
# hald_enable="YES"

2) Reboot or start the services
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dbus start
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/hald start

You should be able to enjoy your display manager now just like in any desktop system.

KDE4, GTK20 and Portsdb Fail Due to Missing Ports

I had a few more problems while installing some basic ports. And in the end the issue was due to cvsup not pulling all the necessary ports due to my refuse file.

First, after installing portupgrade I ran
# portsdb -Uu

But it failed with:
perl: not found

I found some tips online and most of them pointed to a possible use of the refuse file by cvsup. I still didn't want to pull ports that I possibly wouldn't use so I manually installed Perl and, in this case, solved the problem.

Then it came up a second time while installing KDE4. At some point during installation, it stopped with an error at GTK20. The error message suggested running gnomeanalyser.sh to diagnose the problem.

I ran that script but it wasn't able to diagnose the problem and suggested removing the refuse file and re-running cvsup. So this time I did remove my entries (not the language ones) from the refuse file and ran cvsup again.

After all the ports were updated, I installed KDE4 again and it ran without a problem.

FreeBSD/amd64 Failed installworld btxlsd

In my last build of FreeBSD/amd64, installworld failed with the following error:
btxld:No such file or directory

It was a little cryptic, specially because it was a fresh install, but after a little internet search I found a possible cause/solution for the issue. The date/time was out of sync...and that was indeed the cause!

You can check the date/time by simply running this:
# date

To sync it I ran:
# adjkerntz -i

Then I re-installed world and everything went fine.

Metallica Back to the Bay Area + Free Downloads

Very exciting news that Metallica will be returning to the Bay Area (December 2009) for another concert! The last one in Oakland rocked!

And I've been enjoying the tour updates with all the interesting (historical) facts. You can also download the tracks of each concert (paid) and a bunch of other free downloads of older concerts.

FreeBSD and Intel Core 2 Quad

This was a very silly mistake but since I always ran FreeBSD on Pentium machines then I always installed the i386 version; however, if you have an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU don't do that!!!

Intel Core 2 Quad is a 64-bit architecture and in order to take advantage of the four CPUs then you must install FreeBSD/amd64! You also need to have SMP enabled in the Kernel (which is already a standard in all the latest releases).

For more info, please read the FreeBSD hardware requirements page.