Re: The "Oh, No..." error when gdm is trying to start
On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Paul Johnson <pauljohn32@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
The one time I had this happen, I was able to boot up using an earlier
kernel, which I then made the default until the next upgrade. That
helps, of course, only if the student's machine has an earlier kernel.
Patrick
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