On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Jon N <jdnandr...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 2:44 PM, Bob Proulx <b...@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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cancvmg0_phds4yjne+e8r5emmyktsmwljsdfvnzsmcpeqat...@mail.gmail.com