Update problems

[sgosnell]

I'm running LMDE, with the repositories pointed to Sid. I've had no problems at all until today, when I did a normal dist-upgrade. The update was a lot of files, but no kernel update, and after it finished and I restarted, I found the boot hangs at the login screen. Everything freezes there - the mouse won't move, nothing happens and it requires holding the power button to restart. I have multiple kernels isntalled, and it's the same with all. I can boot into recovery, but the wireless won't work. I can run startx as root and get a login to the desktop, but not as myself. It's obviously a problem with settings in my /home, but I don't really know where to start looking. Anybody have any insight?

[MikeTbob]

You could try renaming your desktop folder at /home/user/.lmde (or something similar).
Do you see any relevant errors in:
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
/var/log/messages
dmesg
Was Xorg updated? Video driver updates?

[sgosnell]

I don't see anything in /home/user that looks suspicious, or that was changed at the time. I don't know what was updated, there was more than 100MB of downloads, so a lot of things were. I looked through the logs and didn't spot anything obvious. I can still boot recovery mode and run startx as root, and get a desktop. A normal boot hangs at the login screen. I tried using a mouse without success. The keyboard also seems to be inop, and the entire system seems to freeze. X runs normally as root, though.

Update: I can log onto a recovery console as root, run "shutdown now", and when prompted press Ctrl-D, and then get a normal login screen and a normal X session. That's the only way I can get a normal X session, though. Regular boot doesn't work, and the only way I can boot is to boot into a recovery console, start a shutdown, then stop it with Ctrl-D.

[rokytnji]

If you were using the driver, xserver-xorg-video-nv . It was removed in the X upgrade. If that was the driver you were using, you can use xserver-xorg-video-nouveau instead.

Do you know what packages were listed for removal.

antiX-forum - View topic - apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade IBM A22m AntiX 8.5

[sgosnell]

I didn't see anything listed for removal, but I may have missed something. I don't have an Nvidia graphics card, it's just a bog-standard Intel, so neither the nouveau nor nvidia drivers should be in use. The video seems fine even with the hung login screen, and it works fine after logging in through the recovery console. I think it's in the settings in my home somewhere, but I can't find anything different.

[rokytnji]

In /home You might want to look maybe at ~/.xinitrc file. Maybe grab the one from live cd and drag it to /home/documents and see if any differences. Long shot suggestion though.

I use Slim instead of GDM or KDM for graphical login. I know slim grabs ~/.xinitrc to get to Desktop on Login.

[sgosnell]

Nope, that file doesn't exist on my system. I use Gnome.

[Jonathan183]

Try login as root and create a new user ... can you login as the new user?
Also may be worth trying at boot time making sure splash and quiet are removed from kernel parameters ... text may give a clue whats happening.
Next on the list for me would be stop gdm running at startup ... login as a regular user and user startx

[sgosnell]

I already have other users installed, and I can't choose any of them because the login screen is frozen. You can tell before it comes up, because the 'wait' spinner comes up before the login screen, and it won't move. I can't log in, and can't choose a user.

The text goes by far too fast to read. I'm booting from an SSD, and the whole process is well under 30 seconds. I may research stopping gdm, but I'm not sure how to do that right now, off the top of my head.

[Jonathan183]

Sounds like its not something in home area if you can't select new users. Should be able to stop gdm loading by renaming S20gdm to K20gdm in /etc/rc2.d/