Mint 17 mate - no desktop

[notesetter]

I have a 5 day old installation of Mint 17 Mate 64-bit that has mysteriously stopped working. I'm using an AMD Radeon Gigabyte 6670 GPU for video.

I used it all day yesterday with no issues, and when I went to boot it up this morning, it never gets to the desktop. Grub2 works, Mint seems to boot fine, I get the expected login screen, and I enter my login credentials. After that, all I get is a black screen with a mouse pointer that moves when I move the mouse.

Ctrl.+Alt.+F1 gives me a shell. To try to fix the problem, I've taken the following steps:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

apt upgraded all packages, including xorg packages (I paid attention).

Then

Code: Select all

sudo reboot

The machine rebooted, and I attempted to login, with the same result as before.

Then I did

Code: Select all

sudo X -configure

and got an xorg.conf.new in my home directory. I rebooted again and tried to login again.

Same result.

I'd like to fix this (vs. reinstall) because I've already spent time setting it up. It's my production machine and I have a deadline approaching that requires me to record and edit some sound. Furthermore, I'd like to be able to determine what caused the issue in the first place so that I can prevent it from happening again.

Any assistance is appreciated.

Thanks,

David

[raptir]

After you switch to tty1 (ctrl-alt-f1) and login, what happens if you run...

Code: Select all

startx

?

[notesetter]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that.

That's the first thing I tried after getting to a shell. It just made the screen blank, but with no mouse pointer this time. So I went back to tty1 and it was detailing the terminal output of startx. So I went to tty2 and rebooted.

[raptir]

Was there anything of note in the terminal output? Did it appear to hang at a particular place?

Also, what is the contents of ~/.xinitrc?

[notesetter]

Hi raptir,

First, thank you for taking a look at this. I've been using GNU/Linux for almost 6 years now - mostly Ubuntu and derivatives. I don't have a strong computing background - before trying Linux, I was a Windows user (from Windows 95 onward).

I'm continually humbled by the effort experienced users put into helping newcomers. In exchange for this goodwill, I always try to be a good student.

The terminal output.

There didn't seem to be any red flags in the terminal output of the startx command, but I really don't know what I'm looking at. I can send you the whole log from /var/log if that helps.

It appears there is no .xinitrc in my home directory. Is this unusual?

However, I did find a .xsession-errors file. Some of it looks rather suspicious.

Might this be a breadcrumb?

Here's what it says:

/etc/mdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
localuser:david being added to access control list
Script for ibus started at run_im.
Script for auto started at run_im.
Script for default started at run_im.
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Script for ibus started at run_im.
Script for auto started at run_im.
Script for default started at run_im.
x-session-manager[1962]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....
Xsession: X session started for david at Wed Nov 12 21:57:44 EST 2014
localuser:david being added to access control list
Script for ibus started at run_im.
Script for auto started at run_im.
Script for default started at run_im.
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Script for ibus started at run_im.
Script for auto started at run_im.
Script for default started at run_im.
libGL error: failed to open drm device: Permission denied
libGL error: failed to load driver: r600
gnome-session-is-accelerated: llvmpipe detected.
x-session-manager[2272]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....

[notesetter]

*bump*

[raptir]

Well, it looks like my knowledge of booting into a graphical environment without a display manager is outdated and xinitrc should not be preset. I'm honestly not sure what startx runs now but it does work on my system. It boots a default xfce session though, not the normal Linux Mint xfce session.

From the text of the error message it looks like there is a problem loading your graphics driver. Honestly, I'm not very familiar with AMD graphics in Linux so hopefully someone else will be able to jump in.

[kukamuumuka]

Then I did

Code: Select all

sudo X -configure

and got an xorg.conf.new in my home directory. I rebooted again and tried to login again.

Same result.

xorg.conf influences only on the /etc/X11 directory ..

Code: Select all

sudo cp xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf