GDM Crashing and unable to log out of SSH session

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8

Issue

  • Subsequent to installing RHEL 5.8 x86_64bit, any attempt to log out from an SSH session fails due to "Jobs Running"
root # exit
You have running jobs
root # jobs
[3] +  Running                 <command unknown>
[35] -  Running                 <command unknown>
[32]    Running                 <command unknown>
[28]    Running                 <command unknown>
[23]    Running                 <command unknown>
[14]    Running                 <command unknown>
[11]    Running                 <command unknown>
[5]    Running                 <command unknown>
[21]    Running                 <command unknown>
[19]    Running                 <command unknown>
[16]    Running                 <command unknown>
[12]    Running                 <command unknown>
[10]    Running                 <command unknown>
[8]    Running                 <command unknown>
[2]    Running                 <command unknown>

0 S root      4172  4002  0  81   0 - 16494 wait   15:25 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh /etc/gdm/XKeepsCrashing
4 S root      4190  4172  0  83   0 -   949 wait   15:25 ?        00:00:00 /usr/libexec/gdmopen -l /bin/sh -c /etc/gdm/XKeepsCrashing
0 S root      4191  4190  0  85   0 - 16494 wait   15:25 tty7     00:00:00 /bin/sh /etc/gdm/XKeepsCrashing -noopen
0 S root      4348  4191  0  85   0 - 17776 -      15:25 tty7     00:00:00 /usr/bin/whiptail --yesno Failed to start the X server (you
4 S root      5078  3609  0  75   0 - 26602 -      20:40 ?        00:00:00 sshd: root@pts/0

Resolution

  • Remove date trap line from /etc/profile
trap 'date "+#%c" | read -s' debug

Root Cause

This RHEL6-specific command in /etc/profile does not work the same way in RHEL5.

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