[sf-lug] When GUI X sessions turn bad...

[RBV]

Hi:

I'm trying to resolve an  annoyance with my Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) system running Gnome.  For what it's worth, the system has a 2 GHz P4 and 1 GB of RAM, so I don't think system resources are the issue.

The problem is that non-default Gnome sessions, the ones accessed via CTRL+ALT+[F1-F6], don't stay GUI if I leave them alone for even a few seconds.

WHAT I CAN DO -
>From my default Gnome session (the one that "lives at" CTRL+ALT+F7), I can use CTRL+ALT+[F1-F6] to go to a new text-based session window, login under a currently active or new user name, then type (without the quotation marks) "startx -- :[1-6]" to start a new Gnome desktop session.  As long as I stay in that new Gnome session everything works perfectly.

WHAT I CAN'T DO -
IF, after setting up a secondary Gnome session, I use CTRL+ALT+Fn to navigate away from that session then back to it, I receive a text-based screen with the startup sequence of the broken X session listed -- that is to say, the Gnome session has become unusable.

When this happens, the only thing I've figured out is to use CTRL+c to terminate the broken X / Gnome session, then re-type the "startx -- :[1-6]" command to restart the Gnome GUI interface.

Because my default "F7" Gnome session remains unaffected, this issue isn't a show stopper, at least not yet.  But it is annoying because I'd like to be able to enjoy the power of multiple GUI terminal sessions.  It's tough to do that when they're broken every time I return to them...

Does anyone have any troubleshooting suggestions that I can use to isolate this issue and remedy it?  Note that I'm a moderately competent user but experimentally hand-editing text-based configuration files always makes me a little nervous...

Cheers & thanks,
Riley
SFO