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 >> 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 -- 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/CANcvmg2NRLVxW3irgYrZZdJZYZVk5iYfLmo5ECS_0RK=vdr...@mail.gmail.com
