Problems when booting up...

[Derek Broughton]

Janne Jokitalo wrote:

> Larry Shields wrote:
>> Ok Derek - - I just tried to  reinstall gdm, and it told me that gdm in
>> not currently installed, so it will not be reinstalled.
>> 
>> Why is this happening...???
> 
> Hi, I'm not Derek but I'm happy to help. :)

Hey, you sound just like me :-) - or at least how I would have sounded if
I'd given the complete and correct advice!
> 
> Reinstall won't happen if a package wasn't installed in the first place.
> You just simply install gdm like you would any other package.
> 
> 'sudo apt-get install gdm'

Obviously, I should have pointed out that Larry might need to try both
reinstall and install.

As to "why is this happening?": the short answer is because gdm got removed
from your system.  The only-slightly-longer answer is "I haven't got a clue
how it happened, but gdm has obviously been removed from your system". 
Fortunately, that makes the cure a whole lot simpler than actually trying
to diagnose it if it was installed but broken.
-- 
derek