Re: Won't complete bootup (gdm3 problem?)
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Jon N <jdnandroid@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
oops, fumble fingers. I 'sent' by accident :-). Anyway, not that I
can't learn, but I would rather do it when the rest of the system is
working the way I like.
>>> 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 checked, there are a lot of errors in there. The first few sound
promising. Both not being able to parse, and read, several files:
/home/<username>/.config/autostart/xfce4-notes-autostart.desktop
/home/<username>/.config/autostart/xfce4-settings-helper-autostart.desktop
/home/<username>/.config/autostart/zeitgeist-datahub.desktop
>>
>>> 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
>>
I know about those, and use them. I select one of the recovery
options from GRUB just to save a little time if I know I'm not going
to load a desktop.
>> 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.
Once I select the 'log out' button I can use Cntl-Alt combo to change
VT's, but 7 is blank, and 8 may just have a cursor blinking in the
upper left corner. 1-6 are OK.
>>
>>> 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".
I did it again, just to make sure the '--' was in there, but it didn't
change anything
>>
>>> 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
Yes, I figured it was a meta package, but at least, if I was missing
something important, it should install any missing packages that are
effecting this.
>>
>>> 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.
I agree. I have been using this system for about 7 years, recreating
it would be one big colossal pain. Actually, I'm buying new equipment
(it's finally time to upgrade) and was looking forward to a new
system. But it will take weeks or more before I get everything set up
again.
>>
>> 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.
I like Xfce. Since nothing in xsessions-errors really popped out at
me as an obvious cause so far all can think to do is keep
re-installing things hoping it will fix the problem. Not a very
efficient approach, I admit.
Thanks,
Jon
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