# gnome-session question



## doughy (Nov 12, 2010)

it's been a while since I used X on freebsd. I installed xdm and set it to start at bootup in /etc/ttys. it works but I forgot how to get gnome-session to start when I login via xdm. I put gnome-session in .xinitrc but it just stalls when I try to boot into x. I forgot what file to put gnome-session in.


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## mousaka (Nov 12, 2010)

See the Chapter Desktop Environments in the handbook.

Is there a reason you don't use gdm?

mousaka


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## SirDice (Nov 12, 2010)

XDM (and GDM, KDM etc) use ~/.xsession instead of ~/.xinitrc. The latter is used by startx.

The simplest solution is to symlink those two:
`% ln -s ~/.xinitrc ~/.xsession`

And I definitely recommend using GDM instead of XDM if you're going to use Gnome. If you don't some things won't work properly.


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