Re: Won't complete bootup (gdm3 problem?)
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:44 PM, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:
> Jon N wrote:
>> I know I shouldn't mess with things, I really don't know what i'm
>> doing for the most part. But sometimes I can't resist.
>
> It is okay to mess with things as long as you learn about the system
> through the process. :-)
>
>> Now, when I boot my computer, after the Nvidia screen shows (I'm
>> running the drivers downloaded from Nvidia)
>
> (shakes head)
>
>> I get a screen with an unhappy looking computer graphic in the
>> center and below that the text:
>> "Oh no! Something has gone wrong.
>> A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Please log out
>> and try again."
>
> I think that is GNOME or GDM failing.
>
>> There is a button labeled "Log Out" just below that. Logging out and
>> back in (nor rebooting) does not help.
>
> Your computer has booted the operating system just fine. Your system
> is running just fine. But the GNOME desktop environment has failed to
> start.
Yes, except I haven't used Gnome since Gnome 3 came out. But a lot of
it's components were still installed. I also have Mate, Xfce,
Openbox, Enlightenment, and probably one or two other... uh, desktops,
window managers, etc, installed. I've tried all of them at least
once.
>
> Now some people might claim that GNOME *is* the operating system. But
> don't believe it. It is not. This is proven by the number of people
> that use Debian every day but do not have GNOME on the system at all.
>
>> The problem may have to do with gdm3. When I went to upgrade it
>> yesterday it wanted to install a lot of stuff I had previously
>> uninstalled as no longer needed, so I did not upgrade it. I installed
>> xdm instead, which worked.
>
> xdm is fine. It is the venerable original X Display Manager that gdm
> and kdm are based upon.
>
> If you preferred a pretty one then lightdm is the same but has shiny
> styling. I have been using it on systems with a graphical login
> manager installed.
>
The only reason I prefer gdm3 is it gives me options on which
environment I want to load. Normally I use Mate, but xdm didn't offer
any choice and I don't know how to change it. Not that i can
>> But I don't know how to configure it and
>> it did not start the desktop I usually run (Mate) so decided to go
>> back to gdm3. I did upgrade it (along with installing the additional
>> packages it required) but now I get the message above.
>
> Look for errors in your $HOME/.xsession-errors file.
>
>> I booted to recovery a couple of times and tried various things.
>
> Why boot to recovery? If you are actually getting to the point where
> your installed gdm/gdm3 is giving you that error then your system is
> running perfectly fine. Simply log into it and fix the problems with
> GNOME. You do not need to boot a recovery.
>
> Your system will be starting six login terminals on the Linux console.
> Choose one of them and log in. One of these:
>
> Cntl-Alt-F1
> Cntl-Alt-F2
> Cntl-Alt-F3
> Cntl-Alt-F4
> Cntl-Alt-F5
> Cntl-Alt-F6
>
> Any of those will get you to one of the Linux VTs 1 through 6. The X
> session will be running on either VT 7 or VT 8. (It should be VT 7
> and will be but due to a bug then the second time it will rotate up to
> VT 8 and remain there.) Use Cntl-Alt-F7 to return to the graphics
> session runing on VT 7. Or use Cntl-Alt-F8 if it is moved to VT 8.
>
>> Thinking gdm3 may not have been configured correctly I ran
>> 'dpkg-reconfigure gdm3' and get the message "[ ok ] Scheduling reload
>> of GNOME Display Manager configureation: gdm3". But it still does not
>> work. I also removed xdm thinking they may conflict, but that didn't
>> help.
>
> Multiple graphical login managers (X display managers) may be
> installed at the same time. The system selects which one to start by
> the contents of the /etc/X11/default-display-manager file. It
> contains one entry. It contains the path to the display manager to
> start. It will point to one of xdm, gdm, gdm3, kdm, lightdm, or other
> xdm alternative display manager. I sometimes edit that file manually
> and make the string point to a non-existent entry (append .disable) to
> temporarily disable things. Then it won't try to start an xdm at boot
> time and will display the Linux VT 1.
>
>> I tried dpkg configure -a in case something else was pending,
>
> dpkg --configure -a
>
> Good idea. But with the "--configure" not "configure".
>
>> but there was no output, and I still get the same message as above
>
> Then all of the packages successfully configured.
>
>> when I tried to boot to the desktop. And, finally, after some more
>> head scratching I ran 'apt-get install gnome', thinking that I was
>> missing something related to the Gnome environment. Although it
>> installed a lot of stuff (47 packages, I think), it still stops at the
>> same message as above.
>
> The "gnome" package is a meta package. It depends upon other
> components such as gnome-core. Removing gnome won't really remove
> core parts. If they weren't marked as manually installed then you
> might have them offered as a candidate with 'apt-get autoremove' after
> removing the 'gnome' package. But you could always remove them
> manually. You can get a list like this:
>
> dpkg -l | grep gnome
>
>> Other than reinstalling everything from scratch, can anyone offer any
>> suggestions on how to fix this?
>
> Figure out what you broke. Look in your $HOME/.xsession-errors file
> for clues.
>
> If you really have no investment in the system then installing a
> pristine image would reset things to a known state. But it is such a
> needless waste of time.
>
> If you want to avoid GNOME then I would install either 'xdm' or
> 'lightdm' and then install 'xfce4'. It is much more likely to operate
> correctly and successfully.
>
> Bob
--
Jon
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