Yesterday I upgraded my debian testing release (jessie) and after that the Gnome Desktop and also gdm3 (the Desktop Manager to login) was broken. I installed lightdm and xfce to get back a working desktop. But I can’t figure out whats going wrong until my last upgrade.
Finally I found help in this forum thread.
So I removed all the nvidia packages (I had no nvidia graphic card but a Intel HD3000)
apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*
Next I reinsalled gdm3, gnome and reconfigured finally gdm3
apt-get --reinstall install gdm3 apt-get --reinstall install gnome apt-get --reinstall install gnome-shell dpkg-reconfigure gdm3
After that procdure my system worked again!
I don’t understand why a dist-upgrade on a system with not nvidia graphic card leads into such a strange situation.
Corrupted /tmp folder
Additional I was affected from a corrupted /tmp folder which shows the wrong size. To solve this I found the following Blog Post.
http://deshack.net/debian-hangs-during-boot/
- press ‘e’ during the grub boot loader
- add the following to the end of the line starting with /boot/vmlinuz…
–add rw init=/bin/bash - press f10 to boot with that configuration – system will start in a bash
- remove and create the tmp folder
>rm -rf /tmp
>mkdir /tmp
>chmod 1777 /tmp - reboot system
This helps me to create a new empty /tmp folder.
Thank you! Among the many reports and forum-threads about problems with gdm3 after dist-upgrade to Debian Jessie yours was that one that helped me solving my problem. My nvidia packets were not even installed any more because I changed hardware 2 years ago, but some config-files were still around. ‘–purge’ and now the system reboots into the graphical login-screen again.
Awesome help. Thanks
Thank you so much.
Thanks A LOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IT WORKS FINALLY
I had Jessie to begin with, and I was working on persistent usb. My issue was while installing some new gnome packets to address a printer issue, my usb reverted to only terminal, no GUI. This helped, but now I have to go to recent activities to see the left-hand menu; otherwise it is not visible or reachable. What a day…
But thank you for at least getting me back to the gui, and with all my saved work. I am a newb, and it took forever to find linpng12.0 for wps office, install sound and cups and a printer, and reconfigure the touchpad doc. to incluse scrolling on the pad. I really need to learn how to back up my usb before making iffy changes. Hugs to you!
Use Ubuntu, no problem with repository packet, no problem with gdm3
Did the trick for me. Thanks so much.