- The goal: install CentOS 5.0 under VMWare Workstation running on Windows Vista (64 bit). I've done it before, multiple times, without a hitch in about 20 minutes.
- The reality: well, there was more than a few hitches and it took an entire afternoon.
- The problem: after install and upon reboot the GDM (Gnome Display Manager) GUI does not come up - you are left with a command line prompt. Manually trying startx at the command line gave an error saying X Windows was already running :-(
I've done this before (in February 2008) so what is different now? CentOS 5.0 is exactly the same, I'm using the same ISO image as in February. However, both Vista and VMWare Workstation are in a different state - Vista is now at SP1 with numerous other updates and VMWare is at version 6.05 (vs. 6.01 in February). After several failed installs I became convinced it had something to do with SELinux - each time I disabled SELinux during the first-time boot procedure, GDM would not launch. If I left SELinux enabled during the first boot then disabled it later, I had varying degrees of success. I could not find any solid evidence to conclusively prove this hypothesis, but this is the procedure that eventually worked:
- Install (from ISO on networked drive) and leave the firewall and SELinux enabled
- Reboot - got no GDM GUI
- Reboot again (out of frustation) and what do you know, there it was - the wonderful GDM GUI
- Install VMWare-Tools
- Shutdown, point the CD to drive D: (not the ISO file used for install)
- Restart then minimized services and disabled IPV6
- Reboot and disable SELinux (via the GUI or /etc/selinux/config)
- Reboot and disable the firewall
- Finally! We are in the state we want and the GDM GUI is coming up after restarting!
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