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Don't blame yourself. Re: Won't complete bootup (gdm3 problem?)



On Fri, 29 Nov 2013 13:59:01 -0500, Jon N wrote:

> I know I shouldn't mess with things, I really don't know what i'm doing
> for the most part. 

There's a good chance it's not your doing.  The mailing list archives 
suggest a lot of people have had similar ptoblems lately.

My gdm3 failed today.

It gives me a black screen with a few icons in the top left that I can 
use for things like check battery status and powering down.  Logging in 
did not seem to be an option.

I still could log in on a text console (control-alt-F1) and run startx.  
But instead of my usual xfce I got gnome3, which I find unusable.

I decide to install another display manager.

I install xdm and reboot.  I get to log in, but I seemed to have no 
choice of window manger, and again got gnome3.

I install lightdm and reboot.  This one gives ma a choice of window 
manager.  I choose IceWm and my system is again usable.

Don't blame yourself.  I suspect it's gdm3.  Again.  (It screwed up the 
upgrade to wheezy on my server, too. But that was almost a year ago, when 
gnome wa in shambles.  I gather it's better now.  It just doesn't seem to 
do what I want.)

There must be some way to choose a different window manager using .xinitrc 
or .xserverrc or something like that, but I don't know what it is.  I 
used to, over a decade ago, when you *had* to hand-edit these files to 
survive.

-- hendrik



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