.\" 
.\" gnome-session manual page.
.\" (C) 2000 Miguel de Icaza (miguel@helixcode.com)
.\"
.TH GNOME 1 "GNOME 1.0"
gnome-session \- Starts up the GNOME desktop environment
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B gnome-session [\-\-choosesession] [\-\-failsafe]
[\-\-purge-delay=DELAY] [\-\-warn-delay=DELAY]
[\-\-suicide-delay=DELAY] [session-name]
.SH DESCRIPTION
The \fIgnome-session\fP program starts up the GNOME desktop
environment.  This command is typically executed by your login manager
(either gdm, xdm, or from your X startup scripts).  It will load
either your last session, or it will provide a default session for the
user as defined by the system administrator (or the default GNOME
installation on your system).
.PP
You can optionally specify a specific session name to restore.
.PP
\fIgnome-session\fP is an X11R6 session manager.  It can manage GNOME
applications as well as any X11R6 SM compliant.
.PP
\fIgnome-session\fP uses the contents of the  ~/.gnome/session file
for starting up as specified by the "Current Sesssion" key in the
~/.gnome/session-options file.  Various default values are 
provided in case the file entry does not exist.
.PP
If the session file does not exist, \fIgnome-session\fP will use the
contents of the 
.I /usr/share/gnome/default.session
file.
.SH OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
.TP
.I "--choose-session=ARG"
User can specify a session to load, as opposed to the session 
specified in the ~/.gnome/session-options file. If that entry
does not exist in the ~/.gnome/session file (or if that file
doesn't exist), it will use the default session and all saves
to that session will be to the new session name.
.TP
.I "--failsafe"
Fail safe operations mode: only reads saved sessions from the
default.session file.
.TP
.I "--purge-delay=ARG"
The number of millisecond that \fIgnome-session\fP will wait for
clients to register, if you use 0 it will wait forever (default value:
30,000 milliseconds).
.TP
.I "--warn-delay=ARG"
The number of millisecond that \fIgnome-session\fP will wait for
clients to respond, if you use 0 it will wait forever (default value:
10,000 milliseconds).
.TP
.I "--suicide-delay=ARG"
The number of millisecond that \fIgnome-session\fP will wait for
clients to die, if you use 0 it will wait forever (default value:
10,000 milliseconds).
.SH ENVIRONMENT
\fIgnome-session\fP accepts all of the standard environment variables
used by gnome programs, other than the SESSION_MANAGER 
environment variable. [ xref to a manpage where this is documented. ] 
gnome-session also sets several environment variables
for the use of its child processes.
.PP 
.B SESSION_MANAGER
.IP
This variable is used by session-manager aware clients to contact
gnome-session. 
.PP
.B DISPLAY
.IP
This variable is set to the X display being used by 
\fIgnome-session\fP. Note that if the --display option is used
this might be different from the setting of the environment variable
when gnome-session is invoked.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR default.session (5), gnome-session-save(1)
.SH BUGS
If you find bugs in the \fIgnome-session\fP program, please report
these using \fIbug-buddy\fP or the \fIgnome-bug\fP script included
with the GNOME libraries distribution.