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Black Screen after Login

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2013 6:47 pm
by jhin
Hi everyone,

during the last update something went wrong and now my system is broken.

Problem:
The system boots fine and shows the graphical login screen but once I fill in my credentials and press enter, the screen just turns black except for the mouse cursor, which I can still move. Apart of that, nothing happens, the screen stays black except for the mouse. I can switch to the terminals (ctrl-alt-fx). All packages are installed nicely, apt-get is telling me I'm completely up-to-date.

System:
- Radeon X700 SE
- LMDE running Mate, cat /proc/version shows:

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Linux version 3.2.0-4-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.6.3 (Debian 4.6.3-12) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.2.32-1
Analysis I've done so far:
- Starting a graphical session from the console (either xstart oder service mdm restart/start) leads to the same result
- Adding a new test user and logging in as the test user does also not solve the problem. Thus my profile does not seem to be the problem.
- I do not have a /etc/X11/Xorg.conf file, but according to my research this should be ok...? In fact I already tried creating a dummy Xorg.conf containing just a short entry for the radeon driver, but this also did not have any effect.
- The graphics card worked nicely before the update. I already tried installing lots of different versions of free and non-free drivers, to no avail.
- I checked the Xorg logs, they contain no error messages.
- mdm is installed correctly

I've spent this whole day with trying stuff and crawling forums and irc channels and now I have no further idea on what to do. What annoys me most is that I don't even know what the problem is! Is it some X configuration stuff? Is it a driver problem? Or something completely different?

Any help would be much, much appreciated...

Kind regards, jhin

Re: Black Screen after Login

Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2013 7:20 pm
by jhin
Uhm yeah... :oops: .... I just realized that obviously MATE got uninstalled during the update. :lol: :lol: :lol:
I was quite sure that it was there since "sudo service mdm restart/start" or "/etc/init.d/mdm start/restart" did not issue any error messages, but checking whether the packages were actually there revealed that they were NOT. :P

Re: Black Screen after Login

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 3:36 am
by Stimpeh
very...VERY...FUNNNY ;) :lol: :roll:

Re: Black Screen after Login

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 1:45 am
by mowglie
thank you for this! been scratching my noggin raw for days. same situation as yours except cinnamon wasnt installed. nuts!

Re: Black Screen after Login

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 2:37 pm
by Thubo
Hi,
I've the same / similar problem here...I wanted to exchange mdm for gdm...bad idea.

What I did:

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apt-get purge mdm
apt-get install gdm
After the restart I could login (using the well known standard MATE Login Screen), but the screen stays black. I can see and move my mouse and switch to another console with ctrl+alt+F2...

What I tried meanwhile:

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apt-get get purge gdm
apt-get install mdm 
and I also reinstalled any packages coming with mate-core, mate-common, mate-desktop.

Still no use. I still can see the login screen and login properly, but then the screen goes black and the only thing I can do is move the mouse around.

Anyone any ideas what I'm missing?
Thanks in advance
Thubo

UPDATE:
If I click on "sessions" in the login screen and choose "MATE" I can login properly - yet the option "Run xclient script" fails".
Is there a way to repair this?

Re: Black Screen after Login

Posted: Sun May 04, 2014 11:50 am
by oliver_me03
I was already annoyed when I accidentally discovered this temporary solution for laptop HP 248 G1...
Keep pressing Alt and left arrow keys, then Esc key when prompted by the black login screen (I don' know what to call it :D)

Haven't tested with other arrow keys :D