Unable to login after upgrade

Gregory Gamble greg.gamble at uwa.edu.au
Sat Oct 31 14:20:26 UTC 2020


On Sat, 31 Oct 2020 at 18:20, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Oct 2020 at 10:13, Gregory Gamble <greg.gamble at uwa.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > Dear list,
> >
> > I wonder if you have advice on what to check out.
> >
> > On my "work" computer, I recently did the upgrade from 18.04 to 20.04
> > and now have the curious situation of not being able to login at the desktop,
> > but I'm able to remote login from home.
> >
> > So far the IT guy has not been able to locate the problem.
> > Have you some ideas on where to look and what info. I should provide
> > ... might the GRUB file have been over written?
>
> No. It is booting fine, from what you describe.
>
> As someone else has said, when you log in, the desktop immediately
> crashes, so you just go back to the login prompt.
>
> >      If so, will a sudo command fix it?
>
> It's a bit hard to say until we know what's happening!
>
> I mean, probably, yes, but which one?
>
> First things first. Forget all this mucking about with external keyboards.
>
> Just press Ctrl+Alt+F2 (or F3...F6) at the login screen, and try to
> log in on the text console.

Indeed. Thanks. Apologies for the delay in reply.
I had a few minutes to try Chris's suggestion of the text console login
this morning, before being otherwise engaged most of the day,
and yes, I was able to login at the desktop via Ctrl+Alt+F2.

I tried typing X which crashed.
So as diagnosed, the desktop crashing is the problem.

I had looked at Volker's suggestion of looking at the log file for gdm3
prior to this, but like Volker /var/log/gdm3 for me is empty.

> If it works, and it probably will, you can do an update from there:
>
> sudo -s
> apt update
> apt full-upgrade -y
> apt autoremove -y
> apt clean

I didn't do the above from the console, but I just did the above
via a remote login, and instead of:

apt full-upgrade -y

which failed with:

E: Invalid operation full-ugrade

I did:

apt upgrade -f -y

which I presume is the same.

> This will clear out a lot of leftovers from the system upgrade and
> probably free up a couple of gigs of disk space. Your problem could
> conceivably be as simple as a full disk.

I'm not sure that a full disk was the problem, but after the above,
here is what df gives (I 'sanitised' a couple of lines):

root@<machine>:<home-dir># df
Filesystem                         1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev                                 3998028         0   3998028   0% /dev
tmpfs                                 805656      3212    802444   1% /run
/dev/sda1                          479668904  20867708 434365588   5% /
tmpfs                                4028268         0   4028268   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                                   5120         4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs                                4028268         0   4028268   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop1                              9344      9344         0 100% /snap/canonical-livepatch/94
/dev/loop3                             56704     56704         0 100% /snap/core18/1932
/dev/loop2                            144128    144128         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-26-1604/98
/dev/loop0                            100096    100096         0 100% /snap/core/10126
/dev/loop5                            165376    165376         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/128
/dev/loop7                            100096    100096         0 100% /snap/core/10185
/dev/loop9                              1024      1024         0 100% /snap/gnome-logs/100
/dev/loop8                            261760    261760         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/36
/dev/loop10                           166784    166784         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/145
/dev/loop13                              384       384         0 100% /snap/gnome-characters/570
/dev/loop11                              384       384         0 100% /snap/gnome-characters/550
/dev/loop12                             2304      2304         0 100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/148
/dev/loop14                             2304      2304         0 100% /snap/gnome-system-monitor/145
/dev/loop6                             56704     56704         0 100% /snap/core18/1885
/dev/loop16                             2560      2560         0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/826
/dev/loop18                             2560      2560         0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/748
/dev/loop17                            56192     56192         0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1502
/dev/loop15                           223232    223232         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/60
/dev/loop4                            144128    144128         0 100% /snap/gnome-3-26-1604/100
/dev/loop19                            63616     63616         0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1506
/dev/loop20                             9344      9344         0 100% /snap/canonical-livepatch/95
/dev/loop21                             1024      1024         0 100% /snap/gnome-logs/93
tmpfs                                 805652        24    805628   1% /run/user/121
//<remote-machine>/WWW 264817656 249411244  15406412  95% /mnt/staffhome-www

> From here, you can reboot with Ctrl+Alt+Del.
>
> But more importantly, once you can log in on the console, you can look
> at log files and work out why the desktop is crashing.

I'll do a 'shutdown -r now' in a minute, but for now, I recall the diagnostic this morning from the
X crash suggested the log file .local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log which has the following
(again I 'sanitised' a few lines):

X.Org X Server 1.20.8
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
[  5001.443] Build Operating System: Linux 4.15.0-115-generic x86_64 Ubuntu
[  5001.443] Current Operating System: Linux <machine-name> 5.4.0-52-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP Thu Oct 15 10:57:00 UTC 202
0 x86_64
[  5001.443] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-52-generic root=UUID=ad555ae0-6e95-492d-9e07-70b0
304ff6bb ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
[  5001.443] Build Date: 04 September 2020  01:34:27PM
[  5001.443] xorg-server 2:1.20.8-2ubuntu2.4 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support)
[  5001.443] Current version of pixman: 0.38.4
[  5001.443]    Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
[  5001.443] Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
        (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[  5001.444] (==) Log file: "<home-dir>/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sat Oct
31 09:58:27 2020
[  5001.444] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
[  5001.444] (==) No Layout section.  Using the first Screen section.
[  5001.444] (==) No screen section available. Using defaults.
[  5001.444] (**) |-->Screen "Default Screen Section" (0)
[  5001.444] (**) |   |-->Monitor "<default monitor>"
[  5001.444] (==) No monitor specified for screen "Default Screen Section".
        Using a default monitor configuration.
[  5001.444] (==) Automatically adding devices
[  5001.444] (==) Automatically enabling devices
[  5001.444] (==) Automatically adding GPU devices
[  5001.444] (==) Automatically binding GPU devices
[  5001.444] (==) Max clients allowed: 256, resource mask: 0x1fffff
[  5001.444] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist.
[  5001.444]    Entry deleted from font path.
[  5001.444] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/" does not exist.
[  5001.444]    Entry deleted from font path.
[  5001.444] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/" does not exist.
[  5001.444]    Entry deleted from font path.
[  5001.444] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi" does not exist.
[  5001.444]    Entry deleted from font path.
[  5001.444] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" does not exist.
[  5001.444]    Entry deleted from font path.
[  5001.444] (==) FontPath set to:
        /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,
        /usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,
        built-ins
[  5001.445] (==) ModulePath set to "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
[  5001.445] (II) The server relies on udev to provide the list of input devices.
        If no devices become available, reconfigure udev or disable AutoAddDevices.
[  5001.445] (II) Loader magic: 0x562b4d3a9020[  5001.445] (II) Module ABI versions:
[  5001.445]    X.Org ANSI C Emulation: 0.4
[  5001.445]    X.Org Video Driver: 24.1
[  5001.445]    X.Org XInput driver : 24.1
[  5001.445]    X.Org Server Extension : 10.0
[  5001.446] (EE) systemd-logind: failed to get session: PID 2489 does not belong to any known session
[  5001.447] (II) xfree86: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card0)
[  5001.449] (--) PCI:*(0 at 0:2:0) 8086:0412:103c:18e4 rev 6, Mem @ 0xf7800000/4194304, 0xe0000000/268435456, I/O @
0x0000f000/64, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072
[  5001.449] (II) LoadModule: "glx"
[  5001.449] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so
[  5001.450] (II) Module glx: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[  5001.450]    compiled for 1.20.8, module version = 1.0.0
[  5001.450]    ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 10.0
[  5001.450] (==) Matched modesetting as autoconfigured driver 0
[  5001.450] (==) Matched fbdev as autoconfigured driver 1
[  5001.450] (==) Matched vesa as autoconfigured driver 2
[  5001.450] (==) Assigned the driver to the xf86ConfigLayout
[  5001.450] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting"
[  5001.450] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/modesetting_drv.so

[  5001.450] (II) Module modesetting: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[  5001.450]    compiled for 1.20.8, module version = 1.20.8
[  5001.450]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[  5001.450]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 24.1
[  5001.450] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev"
[  5001.450] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so
[  5001.450] (II) Module fbdev: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[  5001.450]    compiled for 1.20.1, module version = 0.5.0
[  5001.450]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[  5001.450]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 24.0
[  5001.450] (II) LoadModule: "vesa"
[  5001.450] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
[  5001.450] (II) Module vesa: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[  5001.450]    compiled for 1.20.4, module version = 2.4.0
[  5001.450]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[  5001.450]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 24.0
[  5001.450] (II) modesetting: Driver for Modesetting Kernel Drivers: kms
[  5001.450] (II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: fbdev
[  5001.450] (II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa
[  5001.450] (EE)
Fatal server error:
[  5001.450] (EE) parse_vt_settings: Cannot open /dev/tty0 (Permission denied)
[  5001.450] (EE)
[  5001.451] (EE)
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
         at http://wiki.x.org
 for help.
[  5001.451] (EE) Please also check the log file at "<home-dir>/.local/share/xorg/Xor
g.0.log" for additional information.
[  5001.451] (EE)
[  5001.451] (WW) xf86CloseConsole: KDSETMODE failed: Bad file descriptor
[  5001.451] (WW) xf86CloseConsole: VT_GETMODE failed: Bad file descriptor
[  5001.451] (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.

Is there anything helpful there?

Thanks everyone for your help.
I guess I should have know about the console login idea.
This was such a great hint.

Regards,
Greg Gamble
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