Bug#851120: gdm3: does not start after fresh stretch install
On 12/01/17 12:09, Andreas Henriksson wrote:
> Control: reassign -1 xserver-xorg-video-all
> Control: retitle -1 gdm3 does not start on fresh stretch install in vbox
>
> Hello Daniel Pocock,
>
> Thanks for your bug report.
>
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 08:53:19AM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>> Package: gdm3
>>
>> Version: 3.22.1-1
>>
>> Severity: serious
>
> (Please note that you fubared the pseudo header so only Package was
> considered.)
>
Yes, icedove is inserting blank lines that I can't edit out of messages
since some recent change they made upstream.
>>
>>
>> I installed stretch using the 2017-01-12 netinst installer ISO (in a
>> VirtualBox VM) and then I installed gnome with
>>
>>
>> apt-get install gnome
>>
>>
>> The desktop fails to appear, the console just flickers continuously.
>
> That means you don't have a working graphics stack and gdm can't
> start (and keeps failing when it gets restarted after crashing).
>
Can it do anything more graceful than a flashing screen in such cases?
Is there any wishlist bug to track that perhaps?
>>
>> I logged in over ssh and tried various things. Eventually I tried
>>
>>
>> apt-get install xserver-xorg-legacy
>>
>>
>> and now it runs and I see the GNOME login screen.
>
> The xserver-xorg-legacy is definitely not a dependency of gdm3.
> (I don't have it installed on my system for example.)
> Reading the package description makes me think you're using some
> legacy X driver which needs to depend on this package itself.
>
I agree this is a workaround and making gdm3 or gnome depend on it
wouldn't be a solid solution.
> Could you please provide the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file from your
> system so Debian X maintainers can see which driver you're actually
> using?
>
It is for VirtualBox, looks like it was always trying the vesa driver:
# grep -i modules/drivers /var/log/Xorg.*
/var/log/Xorg.0.log:[ 828.641] (II) Loading
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
/var/log/Xorg.0.log.old:[ 7.210] (II) Loading
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
/var/log/Xorg.1.log:[ 841.338] (II) Loading
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
/var/log/Xorg.1.log.old:[ 82.070] (II) Loading
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
/var/log/Xorg.2.log:[ 681.467] (II) Loading
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
/var/log/Xorg.2.log.old:[ 679.762] (II) Loading
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
> Please also note that gdm itself uses wayland by default, so if it's
> falling back on Xorg you likely have a system which has non-functional
> KMS (Kernel Mode Setting). This is likely something you want to have
> fixed for the future.
>
After installing the VirtualBox guest packages from sid:
virtualbox-guest-dkms 5.1.12-dfsg-2
virtualbox-guest-utils 5.1.12-dfsg-2
virtualbox-guest-x11 5.1.12-dfsg-2
it seems to be using KMS and Wayland now.
Is there any way that this can work even for users on their first boot
who haven't installed the virtualbox-guest-* packages yet, for example,
by falling back to xorg?
>>
>> The same problem/solution was observed by another user in this discussion:
>>
>> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=801749#25
>>
>> although that bug report appears to be discussing various gdm3 startup
>> issues so I'm opening this new bug report to focus on this specific issue.
>
> Since I'm not sure exactly which package is missing the dependency
> I'm reassigning it to the meta-package for now. Hopefully once
> you've provided the X log, the X maintainers can reassign it to the
> proper package. Possibly it might not even be up to any x driver, but
> maybe it's just related to using virtualbox. Since vbox guest
> addons isn't installed by default that's problematic but maybe
> it's those that needs to have a dependency on xserver-xorg-legacy.
>
Also discussed in the VirtualBox packages, apparently there are fixes
for this in both VirtualBox and Xorg, see the commit IDs in this reply
from Gianfranco:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=851124#10
Regards,
Daniel
Reply to: