Cannot get past login screen after F9 update

AndyW · #1 21st January 2009, 11:28 AM

I have just updated F9 from kernel 2.6.27.5-41 to 2.6.27.9-73 using yum. System now boots to GUI login screen, but when I log in it keeps returning to the login screen - no error messages, but can't get beyond this point. Same thing happens logging in as root or any other user.

I thought this might be related to the problematic ATI fglrx driver (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=155503) so I removed and reinstalled kmod-fglrx and akmod-fglrx packages without making any difference. I am now using the open-source VESA driver, but still makes no difference.

I can boot into the older kernels installed (2.6.27.5-41 and 2.6.27.5-37) but still have the same problem. I can log in on the terminal command line OK. No sign of obvious errors in Xorg.0.log etc. I have checked that /etc/gdm/Xsession is a symbolic link to ../X11/xinit/Xsession. as this featured in postings relating to similar problems, but everything looks OK there.

Any help gratefully received!

Mikko · #2 21st January 2009, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndyW

No sign of obvious errors in Xorg.0.log etc.

You checked /var/log/messages as well?

You could try creating a new test user with a blank home directory, and logging in as that user. That should tell you if it's something in the per-user config in the home directory (seems unlikely, though) or system wide.

AndyW · #3 22nd January 2009, 11:27 AM

This seems to be the relevant entry in /var/log/messages at the time of attempted login:-

Code:

Jan 22 07:45:05 localhost gdm-simple-slave[2999]: CRITICAL: Cannot read specified session file: gnome.desktop

Sure enough, the file "gnome.desktop" does not exist anywhere. Looking back through the messages file the same entry appears at each login attempt. I have removed and reinstalled the gdm and gnome-desktop packages, but makes no difference.

As expected the same thing happens with a specially-created new user.

leigh123linux · #4 22nd January 2009, 11:53 AM

Try overwriting the packages to replace the config files.

Code:

su
yumdownloader gdm gnome-desktop
rpm -Uvh --replacefiles --replacepkgs gdm*rpm gnome-desktop*rpm

AndyW · #5 22nd January 2009, 10:40 PM

Thanks for the suggestions, which I have followed. However - still no file called "gnome.desktop", and still can't get past login screen...

leigh123linux · #6 22nd January 2009, 10:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndyW

Thanks for the suggestions, which I have followed. However - still no file called "gnome.desktop", and still can't get past login screen...

Code:

[leigh@localhost ~]$ locate gnome.desktop
/usr/share/applications/fedora-xchat-gnome.desktop
/usr/share/applications/gnome-same-gnome.desktop
/usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/sessions/gnome.desktop
/usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop
[leigh@localhost ~]$ su
Password: 
[root@localhost leigh]# yum whatprovides /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
    
Importing additional filelist information
updates/filelists_db                                     | 4.5 MB     00:11     
gnome-session-xsession-2.24.1-3.fc10.x86_64 : gnome-session desktop file
Repo        : fedora
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop



gnome-session-xsession-2.24.2-1.fc10.x86_64 : gnome-session desktop file
Repo        : updates
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop



gnome-session-xsession-2.24.3-1.fc10.x86_64 : gnome-session desktop file
Repo        : installed
Matched from:
Other       : Provides-match: /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop



[root@localhost leigh]#

Try

Code:

su
yum install gnome-session-xsession

AndyW · #7 23rd January 2009, 11:04 AM

The "locate" command found only /usr/share/applications/gnome-same-gnome.desktop, which is provided by the gnome-games-2.22.3-1.fc9 package. When I tried to install gnome-session-xsession I was told no such package was available (this is F9, maybe different on F10?), but I was able install gnome-session and now have a file /usr/share/xsessions/gnome.desktop.

Now when I log in I don't get returned to the login GUI, but just get a blank screen with the F9 wallpaper and a mouse pointer - no sign of any desktop, and cannot do anything apart from breaking out to the terminal with Ctrl-Alt-F1. This happens whichever user I log in as. The "CRITICAL" entry in /var/log/messages no longer appears, and there are now further entries refering to the login user name, so it is clearly getting further now. The first time I managed to log in I got a pop-up dialog saying I had suffered a kernel failure and offering to send diagnostic info to Fedora project (which I did).

Previously I was using KDE desktop, which was configured to load when I did the original F9 install. I am hoping now this is a question of fixing a config file to direct loading of the KDE desktop.

Thanks again to Leigh123 for help and advice.

AndyW · #8 9th February 2009, 09:25 PM

The problem here seems to have been that KDE (and other things) had been corrupted, presumably by the yum update.

Editing (in fact creating) the file /etc/sysconfig/desktop to contain

Code:

DESKTOP="KDE"
DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE"

made no difference, and executing startkde from the command line came back with "command not found". In the end I did a yum groupinstall of KDE (and other apps like mythtv that had disappeared as well) and everything came back as before, including user settings for all the apps.

The original yum update was quite big (about 400 MB I think) as I hadn't been able to update for several weeks due to the dbus problem, but didn't generate any alert messages. Is there a way for an update like that to corrupt applications this way?

Andrew