[PLUG] Ubuntu GDM won't load

Rogan Creswick creswick at gmail.com
Mon Sep 22 18:04:29 UTC 2008


On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Richard C. Steffens
<rsteff at comcast.net> wrote:
> At the clinic yesterday I installed a hard drive mobile rack. Kieth's
> warning as I was leaving was that, since my (mumble) bus is a 133, and
> this rack is (something less) there may be a problem. There was no
> problem during the time the machine ran at the clinic with the rack
> installed. It also ran fine for a few hours last evening (powered up
> around 6:00). However, around 9:00 or so (not sure exactly), windows for
> applications I was running started to fade about 1/2 way and I couldn't
> do anything with them. I could access other windows, but then they'd
> start to fade, too. I decided to shut down and attack it in the morning.

Are you using compiz or some other composition manager? (do the
windows "wiggle" or turn transparent / desaturate / otherwise do
things that seem  strange and (largely) useless?)

The "window fading" thing seems like a compiz / compmanager issue, not
something disk-related.  Compiz is notoriously fickle <rant removed>.

> The shut down process took a very long time (10 minutes or more?). From
> time to time I could hear a relay click twice on the HD rack. Eventually
> the machine did shut down.

That does sound odd though.

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Could not start the X
> server (your graphical environment)
> due to some internal error.
> Please contact your system administrator
> or check your syslog to diagnose.
> In the meantime this display will be
> disabled. Please restart GDM when
> the problem is corrected.
>
>
> moonguide login: rsteff
> Password: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Last login: Mon Sep 22 09:38:38 PDT 2008 on tty1
> Linux moongiude 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 22:56:21 UTC 2008 i686
>
> (Ubuntu disclaimer)
>
> -bash: no job control in this shell
> rsteff at moonguide:~$
> <cr>
>  *starting anac(h)ronistic cron anacron                         [OK]
>  *Starting deferred execution scheduler atd                     [OK]
>  *Starting periodic command scheduler crond                     [OK]
>  *Enabling additional executable binary formats ginfmt-support  [OK]
> Starting VMware services:
>   Virtual machine monitor                                    done
>   Blocking file system:                                      done
>   Virtual ethernet                                           done
>   Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0                          done
>   Host network detection                                     done
>   Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background)           done
>   DHCP server on /dev/vmnet1                                 done
>   Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background)           done
>   DHCP server on /dev/vmnet8                                 done
>  * Checking battery state...                                     [OK]
>  * Running local boot scripts (/etc/rc.local.)                    [OK]
> _ (cursor)
>

Try 'reset<cr>', it may be that the shell is just a bit confused,
since it looks like things started up.  Ctrl-alt-F2 (or f3, f4... etc)
to switch to a new vt may also get you to a usable terminal.

> So, the machine is running from the live CD. The first thing I'd like to
> do is to copy the .mozilla-thunderbird directory over to this laptop so
> I don't have synchronization issues while trying to solve the problem.
> Unfortunately, Ubuntu won't let me. It says I don't have permission to
> do so. How do I override the permissions so I can make a copy of that
> profile directory available on another machine?

You probably need to use sudo (or otherwise become root) to get access
to the user directories you want to see.

> After that, we'll start working on how to fix the main problem.

Nab a copy of /var/log/Xorg.0.log and send that to us, if you can,
along with /etc/X11/xorg.conf

--Rogan



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