Re: The "Oh, No..." error when gdm is trying to start
On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:13:53 -0500, Paul Johnson wrote:
>
>> On a student's Debian system, I ran some updates and resulted in gdm
>> refusing to start, with the error message that shows a picture of a sad
>> computer and a message says:
>>
>> Oh no! Something has gone wrong.
>> A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Please contact a
>> system administrator.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure this is due to a failure in the video drivers--some
>> gnome3 packages installed and the nouveau video driver is not
>> sufficient. And I am certain this problem happened when I tried to
>> update to the network-manager from wheezy on his Squeeze-based system.
>> I hoped some of you might help me think though the problem so I can
>> fix that machine, next time it comes to the office.
>
> (...)
>
> Well, I've got that message under two different situations:
>
> - First, as you say, when there's a problem with the VGA card or driver
> that cannot enable 3D acceleration properly which is needed by gnome-
> shell to start.
>
> - Second, when there's an error (a "syntax" error) in "/usr/share/gnome-
> shell/themes/gnome-shell.css" file.
>
> When this happens, you can still login to "GNOME classical" mode instead
> and work from there until you correct the problem that makes gnome-shell
> to halt. What I've never seen is gnome-shell crashing because of N-M or a
> wireless related update :-?
>
>> This crash happens before GDM offers the list of users, so I don't
>> understand how it could be related to a config problem in a user
>> account. Right? Everybody says "check ~/.xsession-errors", but why?
>
> (...)
>
> Because that file registers the reason of the gnome-shell crash, so what
> does it say? :-)
>
I will check. But you seem not to understand something. This "Oh,
NO.." error happens before anyone is allowed to log in. If no user is
logged in--no user has even had a chance to enter a password because
the graphical login display never starts--there would be no trace of
trouble in ~/.xsession-errors because there is no X session.
The trouble is before that.
> Greetings,
>
> --
> Camaleón
>
>
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--
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science Assoc. Director
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504 Center for Research Methods
University of Kansas University of Kansas
http://pj.freefaculty.org http://quant.ku.edu
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