Linux Mint Forums

I have been using LMDE as my main OS on two PCs since September. After upgrading February 22 neither PC's will work, with LMDE. Both lock up at loging screen , no mouse or keyboard. After reading these posts in the newbe section:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... up#p386877

I decided to make a new topic, to bring this to more expert users. As redkestral said “It's tough to determine how many instances of this have occurred in other users machines since they/I could not access the internet with a unresponsive mouse/keyboard.”

Can anyone help getting our LMDE back working again. I'm not very familiar with terminal but have got myself out of jams before with it, but don't know where to begin for this.

Thank you

Given the other two reports in the previous thread, that could be considered to be a real problem, but before I decide in my mind that it is a problem I would like you to answer two questions.

Are you using the standard LMDE kernel - mine says 2.6.32-5.
Also are you using the standard repositories for LMDE - ie Linux Mint Debian + Debian testing. (look in /etc/apt/sources.list if you are unsure)

If you answer yes to both of those questions then it may be a serious problem but if you answer no to either of them then it is probably a problem of your own making.

Whatever the answers to those questions are the only way you can isolate what the problem is will be to ascertain what your machine has in common with those of redkestral and VRP . Why not pm them and try and work out what the common link is?

Bear in mind hundreds if not thousands of people have installed these updates without problem so there must be something specific to your three machines.

I am not sure that isolating the cause will automatically lead to the cure, but it will go some way toward it I am sure.

did you read http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=141&t=66688 ? there are some packages from unstable and/or experimental that cause gdm to stop working

Bear in mind hundreds if not thousands of people have installed these updates without problem so there must be something specific to your three machines.

Make that 2 more users and 6 more machines..
My Brother and I are Squeeze users for over a year and Have installed and maintained a number of Squeeze installs.
We tried Debian Mint because Mint always does such a Great job of taking the Setup details and accelerating the process out of the Users hands....we get lazy sometimes and like to be pampered... Anyhow it installs good and looks and runs great UNTIL>......
We attempt the the 700 plus Upgrades...
We tried from the Upgrade Manger..Synaptic and also Apt-Get on the CLI.. Each case bore out the same results a damaged Desktop with a difficult or impossible to login GDM.... on all 6 machines 3 reinstalls on each all trying the 3 Update methods as described...
While we would have liked each machine to have a Debian Squeeze Mint on one of the Partitions per each machine (each machine also has Debian Squeeze KDE and Kubuntu 10.10) we are now tired and have replace the Debian Mint partitions with Either another Squeeze Stable or in some Cases Saline Squeeze..

Not a criticism just a report we will Wait for an Updated Release and try again... Otherwise Good Job..

hi viking777,

I'm running 2.6.32.5.686.
Pretty sure it's standard repositories, can't look because locked up.
Tried recovery mode and got a locked up desktop after startx.
anything else, looks like there are other with the same problems.
Do we know that "thousands of people have installed these updates without problem" ?

If I can't fix will have to repartiton and reinstal. Too bad realy liked the OS and worked great till now.

Is it possible to shell out to a terminal on a regular boot, before you try to log in at the login screen? (ctrl-alt-f4), then login at that prompt, and cat /etc/apt/sources.list to check your sources? You might have to add sudo in front of it if it says something about permissions.

Also while you're there, type 'tail /var/log/dmesg' or 'tail /var/log/messages' and see if there are any errors that show up that look like they might be related. Or you could try 'less dmesg' and then hit the space bar to page through the pages and 'q' to get out of it. Lastly, have you done all updates, or just level 1-3 updates? If only level 1-3, doing all updates might do the trick. While you're at that terminal, sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade and see what happens.

Per issues discussed on another thread, if it wants to remove VLC, my reply was 'no', but that shouldn't come up unless you do dist-upgrade. Also all commands noted would be typed without the quotes. HTH.

Ya I guess I`Il join the list of those affected by this upgrade. I have been on holiday for the past month and got home Feb 22, turned on my computer and had something like 451 updates waiting. I started the updates and got as far as sudoers then the machine froze on me completely. So I did the only thing I could do and hard booted to find I can get to the log in screen but the cursor and keyboard are completly unresponsive. I tried booting into recovery mode entered my root password and it seemed to help cause some more updates continued and I didn`t see what was the last but I wanted to make sure they were done and did apt-get update and at that point I had no internet connection.

Needless to say I too am at a loss as I can boot into a frozen login screen or into recovery mode without internet. All I can think to do is to reinstall, but I have spent sooooo much time getting my system the way I like it ........it kinda defeats having a rolling release.

Count me in, too! I posted seperately and then noticed this post. That'll teach me to post from my 'phone whilst getting ready for work!

I have a completely up-to-date box, with a vanilla /etc/apt/sources.list.

Intel 32-bit box.

Chris.

expat wrote:Ya I guess I`Il join the list of those affected by this upgrade. I have been on holiday for the past month and got home Feb 22, turned on my computer and had something like 451 updates waiting. I started the updates and got as far as sudoers then the machine froze on me completely. So I did the only thing I could do and hard booted to find I can get to the log in screen but the cursor and keyboard are completly unresponsive. I tried booting into recovery mode entered my root password and it seemed to help cause some more updates continued and I didn`t see what was the last but I wanted to make sure they were done and did apt-get update and at that point I had no internet connection.

Interested to hear that you got as far as 'sudoers' before it froze. There is a discussion elsewhere about the merits of keeping or rejecting the maintainers package file. My personal stance on this it that you always accept the package maintainers version over your own (especially on such a major update) for the simple reason that his version has been tested with the new update and your old version hasn't. Which decision did you make?

All I can think to do is to reinstall, but I have spent sooooo much time getting my system the way I like it ........it kinda defeats having a rolling release.

Where do you keep your Clonezilla disk image?

You haven't got one?

Why?

Every computer user on the planet (on any OS) should have a disk image that is no more than a week old, then, when that old computer devil comes a knockin' you just laugh in his face

viking777 wrote:
Where do you keep your Clonezilla disk image?

You haven't got one?

Why?

Every computer user on the planet (on any OS) should have a disk image that is no more than a week old, then, when that old computer devil comes a knockin' you just laugh in his face

X2, I was getting sick of hours of updating and reinstalling every time something got screwed in LMDE, now I have cloned 2 of my 3 machines, the Dell does sort of repetitive USB complaint when ever I have a live CD in it, so that one is on blind faith, but it is my wife's so at least she don't do anything to it but web browse, email and a few apps. But yeah, the Cloezilla is a life saver, and a time saver.

Viking777 wrote:

Interested to hear that you got as far as 'sudoers' before it froze. There is a discussion elsewhere about the merits of keeping or rejecting the maintainers package file. My personal stance on this it that you always accept the package maintainers version over your own (especially on such a major update) for the simple reason that his version has been tested with the new update and your old version hasn't. Which decision did you make?

I kept my version, and maybe that why it not working but hell I didn`t know that would break my system. And as for clonezilla, until I decided to go with a rolling release and stay with Mint if anything happened I would just simply reinstall or try a new system, and I never lost data because I don keep anything in my home dir I have separate disks for storage, so never needed clonezilla till now, this is the first time I have put so much time and energy into a system that I actually hate to loose it.

Anyways has anyone figured out a fix as of yet.

I kept my version, and maybe that why it not working but hell I didn`t know that would break my system

There are others that took the same option as you and didn't have a freeze-up so I could not say definitely that your sudoers file was the problem, I was just curious as to which choice you had made. I personally don't think that sudoers is a critical enough file to freeze a system completely. Unless you had manually edited sudoers the only significant difference between the old one and the new one that I can see is the line:

ALL=(ALL) ALL

Which in the new file has become:

ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

NB. That line occurs twice.

So if you like long shots (very long shots!) you could always try using a live cd to edit the file to contain the extra :ALL and see if it makes a difference. Unfortunately to make it even more of a nuisance sudoers will insist on being edited by visudo not a normal text editor like gedit, so if you are not used to using command line text editors that will annoy you believe me!

So what I am saying is unless it is raining where you are and you haven't got anything better to do I wouldn't put a high priority on this, a reinstall may be your only way as nobody else seems to have come up with any other solution (yet).

Try this cure from the Newbie section - it works:

It happened to me too on a Gateway laptop. Either libudev0_166-1 or libgudev-1.0-0_166-1 or both are the guilty parties. Simply boot into recovery mode, go to /var/cache/apt/archives and run dpkg -i with the 164-3 versions. You'll replace the new versions with the previous ones.

Don Tveter


Thanks Don, that fixed it for me.

libudev0_164-3_i386.deb fixed my mouse/keyboard
libgudev-1.0-0_164-3_i386.deb fixed my internet connection


Don, you have my thanks also. Both my desktops are fixed.

Since I had two desktop machines, I was able to unplug/replug the mouse & KB, download libudev0_164-3_i386.deb & libgudev-1.0-0_164-3_i386.deb from the Debian website onto desktop and use the terminal to run sudo dpkg -i /home/f*******n/Desktop rather than go into recovery mode.

-redkestral

Thank you Don

Your solution fixed me up too. I did not have 164-3 versions in my /var/cache/apt/archives, just the new version libudev0_166-1, so I downloaded it from Debian.

Thank you too redkestral.

I hooked up a USB mouse and KB to my system so I could use it till I installed the files. I have a KVM that uses PS/2 (unplugging them did not work).

FYI, I found the files at:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/libs/

I do think there is a problem with the libudev0_166-1 and libgudev-1.0-0_166-1 versions that should be addressed,
but thanks to all who make LMDE. I like it best of all the OS I have tried, but will more careful installing updates.

xamigan

I have the same problem, and fixed it in the same way -- downgrading libudev etc.

What happens now? Will login break at every upgrade from now on, or does the problem get fixed somehow?

I set the Update Manager to ignore the two 'upgrades' and it's been fine since. (Did have to play with apt-get upgrade etc a few times to get rid of the 'fix broken packages' packages message).

I'm just going to leave it until a new version is available.

I had the same problems and got them fixed by downgrading both libudev0* and libgudev* files - hope that the fixed version of these two files come up soon.

aubreyzhang wrote:I had the same problems and got them fixed by downgrading both libudev0* and libgudev* files - hope that the fixed version of these two files come up soon.

Me too - on both a laptop and a desktop running 32 bit, the other desktop running 64 bit has been fine.

hello,

redkestral can you explain me step by step what i have to do to fix my problem?
please, im an newuser
thx a lot in advance

best regards, munich

Munich.

See the topic link in xamigan's orginal post.

V