[SOLVED] upgrade -> no display manager - can't install gdm3

[menuhin]

Dear forum members,

I have been using LMDE and been doing upgrades without any problem.
Then after one update, I had to do a cold restart. And then the computer only boots into the tty (1-6) terminals.
Having tried hitting Ctrl-Alt-F7 but without luck, I logged in tty1 and did a 'startx' - all that I had on the screen was a movable mouse.

Eventually, I figured out that
/etc/X11/default-display-manager
points to
/usr/sbin/gdm3

And gdm3 has not been installed.

I tried to install gdm3 from within the tty1 by doing a:
$ sudo apt-get install gdm3
but I got some error messages:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
gdm3 : Depends: libcanberra-gtk3-0 (>= 0.25) but is it not going to be installed
Depends: libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.0.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: gnome-session-bin (>= 3.0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: policykit-1-gnome but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: zenity
Recommends: gnome-power-manager (>= 2.28) but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: gnome-settings-daemon but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: gnome-icon-theme but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages

Eventually, some packages above also points to the package 'libfontconfig1'. But apt-get said it is already the newest version.

Question 1: How do I fix the display manager problem without totally reinstalling.

Question 2: There is a problem about 'update-initramfs' probably because of the forced shutdown during update. How can I fix these "not fully installed or removed" packages?

Thank you very much for your help and suggestions in advance.

- MJ

[den68]

do you have mdm installed ?
you can check if /etc/sbin/mdm exists, and link to it if it does.

[menuhin]

Thank for your reply.

mdm is not installed.
I installed mdm, and there's only one xterm in the whole GUI after I've logged in. I think there's something wrong.

Dear forum members,
Please let me know where to look at in order to fix this problem.

And why mdm? (themes are not supported as in gdm3 / gnome)
Are the distribution update trying to shift over from gdm3 to mdm?

Thanks again.

Cheers,

MJ

[menuhin]

do you have mdm installed ?
you can check if /etc/sbin/mdm exists, and link to it if it does.

Hi all, after having installed mdm and having the display manager pointing to mdm, I am still stuck at the single xterm scenario after having logged in.
I have to start firefox and all other applications from the terminal.

Please let me know if you have some ideas.
Thanks for your help.

[zerozero]

- how do you usually upgrade the system? apt-get upgrade? apt-get dist-upgrade?
- can you give us the output of

Code: Select all

inxi -Sr

- and also

Code: Select all

cat /etc/apt/preferences

thanks

[menuhin]

Hi zerozero,

The last time that I upgrade 'successfully' was using Mint Update in the Gnome display manager (gdm ?). I used Mint Update and the Debian Update manager at the same time after logging in the GUI. I also used Synaptics, and sometimes apt-get upgrade & apt-get dist-upgrade.
But last time I used it in a GUI, gdm was uninstalled and gdm3 was not installed successfully.

output of $ inxi -Sr

System: Host pc999 Kernel 3.2.0-1-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Distro Linux Mint Debian Edition
Repos: Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free
Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dropbox.list
deb http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu maverick main

output of $ cat /etc/apt/preferences

Package: *
Pin: release o=linuxmint
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: origin packages.linuxmint.com
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: 500

[zerozero]

menuhin,
a couple observations:

- you probably don't update the system in some time: that is an old kernel you are running (unless for some reason you are booting the older one), and not updating for a long period of time in testing is not good.

- you are tracking the *old * lmde repos (nothing wrong with it, i do the same they are great but they demand some attention from the user) and nowadays it's not possible to do so with the default preferences file: you either delete altogether that file or level all the values in there to 500; then do again an update and dist-upgrade (don't trust too much GUI updaters in these big updates);

- if you have nvidia or ati there might be some issues with the new kernel (probably not but ...)

[menuhin]

menuhin,
a couple observations:

- you probably don't update the system in some time: that is an old kernel you are running (unless for some reason you are booting the older one), and not updating for a long period of time in testing is not good.

- you are tracking the *old * lmde repos (nothing wrong with it, i do the same they are great but they demand some attention from the user) and nowadays it's not possible to do so with the default preferences file: you either delete altogether that file or level all the values in there to 500; then do again an update and dist-upgrade (don't trust too much GUI updaters in these big updates);

- if you have nvidia or ati there might be some issues with the new kernel (probably not but ...)

Thanks zerozero,

I've changed all levels to 500 and did an update and then dist-upgrade, and all these again even with -f option.
However, there are things that cannot be upgraded, not to mention that cinnamon and gdm3 won't be installed as stated above.
Here's the output of apt-get -f dist-upgrade, and why this computer is still running an old kernel:

*********
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Setting up initramfs-tools (0.106) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Setting up linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64 (3.2.20-1) ...
Running depmod.
Failed to symbolic-link /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-2-amd64 to initrd.img.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64 (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 17
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-amd64:
linux-image-amd64 depends on linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64; however:
Package linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-amd64 (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-1-amd64
cp: cannot stat `/lib/libacl*': No such file or directory
E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/live failed with return 1.
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-1-amd64 with 1.
dpkg: error processing initramfs-tools (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64
linux-image-amd64
initramfs-tools
*********

Please let me know if any forum member can think of a solution to this. Thanks a lot!

Cheers,

MJ

[zerozero]

the key is here

Code: Select all

cp: cannot stat `/lib/libacl*': No such file or directory
E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/live failed with return 1.
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-1-amd64 with 1.

this is an old error
viewtopic.php?f=141&t=77878
viewtopic.php?f=198&t=82925
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=79020
(probably i could give you more topics about that)
try:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get remove live-initramfs

and after that the usual dist-upgrade (and -f install if needed) until there's no error in the final output

[menuhin]

the key is here

Code: Select all

cp: cannot stat `/lib/libacl*': No such file or directory
E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/live failed with return 1.
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-1-amd64 with 1.

this is an old error
viewtopic.php?f=141&t=77878
viewtopic.php?f=198&t=82925
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=79020
(probably i could give you more topics about that)
try:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get remove live-initramfs

and after that the usual dist-upgrade (and -f install if needed) until there's no error in the final output

Thanks for your reply zerozero. Here's the new error messages from "sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade" --- I've done that a few times and it stays the same.
*********
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Setting up linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64 (3.2.20-1) ...
Running depmod.
Failed to symbolic-link /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-2-amd64 to initrd.img.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64 (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 17
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-amd64:
linux-image-amd64 depends on linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64; however:
Package linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-amd64 (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64
linux-image-amd64
*********

[menuhin]

I've now removed linux-image-3.2.0-2-amd64 and linux-image-amd64. And 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' looks fine.
I've installed gdm3 successfully. However, after I logged in the Alt-F7 environment, there is only 1 xterm, and nothing else, like in mdm.

What other packages do I need to install on top of that (or make sure that they are installed properly) in order to have the full desktop environment like the past Gnome or KDE (with file explorer, a desktop, and some handy status monitors / manager, and application launcher/browswer)?

Thanks a lot for your help.

[menuhin]

I reinstalled gnome and got back the desktop envirnoment.
Thanks for all of you, especially zerozero.

[zerozero]

i'm really glad you got it sorted