Desktop Broken

[searle]

Patched my system last night, and no longer have a desktop.

I've rebooted several times to no avail, and also tried ctrl-alt-backspace and relogged in.

Any suggestions?

[edtheuniquegeek]

I seem to have a similar issue. I updated today and after a reboot my system is hosed. I get a desktop though, however it freezes up quite frequently. I can move the mouse for one second and the system freezes for about 30 seconds. I'm able to work again for about a second and then it freezes for about 30 seconds again. Rinse and repeat. I have Conky running and notice in my top processes that Cinnamon is almost at a constant 50% CPU.
I can't remember all the updates that came out today but I do remember seeing an Nvidia update and that was the last update I completed before the reboot. Evidence points to the Nvidia update being the culprit but I have tried changing the Nvidia driver under Additional Drivers (took about 5 minutes to complete with all the constant freezing) but it hasn't fixed my issue yet.
Please help.

[edtheuniquegeek]

Also, I have tested a login under the other environments, Gnome, Gnome Classic, Gnome Classic (No effects) & Mate, and the only one that seems to exhibit the issue is Cinnamon.

[searle]

I suppose I should have been more specific about my errors...

- I'm running a couple desktop widgets, and they appear to be working fine.
- I have a desktop, and have a right-click context menu available to create icons and such.
- I have no toolbar to launch applications, view task manager, etc
- If I launch Firefox through the console, it appears but without the frame (no close button, minimize, etc.)
- I don't have any freezing as your post describes, so I'm not sure its exactly the same issue; but, it may be caused by the same source.
- I have a 45xx series ATI card, and have been running current on all Linux Mint updates.

Is there anyway to roll-back on the patches?

[edtheuniquegeek]

Did you try the other environments - Gome, Mate, etc. - to see if you were having the same issue there?

[searle]

Well, I would... but it appears I have no access now. System loads to a black screen, and I have absolutely no functionality.

I attempted netroot in order to update / fix any packages, but it claims that I don't have a network connection.

I think I may just resort to a reinstall.

[jaforcon]

If you can still access your cinnamon session, (and you have MATE installed) what I did was to force log-out through terminal, and then log-in using MATE. It takes some time to login, but after the first time It didn't take so long.

(incase someone doesn't know, I get the terminal on by right clicking on the desktop and hit "execute in Terminal" or something similar)

Logout using terminal/console:

Code: Select all

skill -KILL -u username

where username is your linuxmint username

Once out, I enter with MATE.

I have just registered to give you my personal "solution". I am giving up on Gnome 3 (be it Shell or Cinnamon) for ATI (at least for now), even after installing the 12.3 official driver (from AMD webpage). My card is also an ATI 45xx graphic card, and after the last update Cinnamon and Gnome just... failed (lost all bars an headers).
The specific update that made my cinnamon session fail contained:
-libgl1-mesa-dri
-libgl1-mesa-glx
-libglapi-mesa
-libglu1-mesa

Hope this can help other people before they give up and decide to make a clean installation.
For now use Mate or other DE.

Good luck.

[edtheuniquegeek]

Yeah. I've been signing into the Mate session and avoiding Cinnamon until it is fixed or Mint 13 comes out, whichever comes first. I'm not much of a fan of Mate but it will have to do until.

[chazdg24]

If you can still access your cinnamon session, (and you have MATE installed) what I did was to force log-out through terminal, and then log-in using MATE. It takes some time to login, but after the first time It didn't take so long.

(incase someone doesn't know, I get the terminal on by right clicking on the desktop and hit "execute in Terminal" or something similar)

Logout using terminal/console:

Code: Select all

skill -KILL -u username

where username is your linuxmint username

Once out, I enter with MATE.

I have just registered to give you my personal "solution". I am giving up on Gnome 3 (be it Shell or Cinnamon) for ATI (at least for now), even after installing the 12.3 official driver (from AMD webpage). My card is also an ATI 45xx graphic card, and after the last update Cinnamon and Gnome just... failed (lost all bars an headers).
The specific update that made my cinnamon session fail contained:
-libgl1-mesa-dri
-libgl1-mesa-glx
-libglapi-mesa
-libglu1-mesa

Hope this can help other people before they give up and decide to make a clean installation.
For now use Mate or other DE.

Good luck.

Same issue here. Kinda lame, IMHO.

[bill1815]

Count me as another victim. I've got separate installations of both the Gnome/Cinnamon and KDE versions of Mint and the update wrecked both of them (unresponsive system, freezes, etc). I found I could run KDE almost like normal by disabling Compiz. Unfortunately, 3D acceleration for 32bit apps also appears to have been hosed as Windows games I play under Crossover will no longer run. There's been some speculation in other threads that this is Nvidia-related since nvidia-current was updated, but I see there's at least one ATI owner who's having problems as well.

I've been wanting to give Chakra a whirl, so I guess I'll try that out for a while and wait to see if this gets fixed.

[edtheuniquegeek]

It must be something with Nvidia and ATI because I updated Cinnamon to 1.4 on my laptop with a Intel integrated video card and I am not having any issues.

[bill1815]

Perhaps this is pertinent? Wait and see I guess...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTA4ODc

[edtheuniquegeek]

Yep. Sounds like this is my issue as I have the GeForce 8800GTX.
Thanks for that link.

[searle]

Just as a follow up.

After formatting, reinstalling, and patching, the majority of the major issues were gone. However, I was still getting constant graphical glitches, and X11 would crash on my constantly. After a little research, I decided to try turning off notifications, and it seems to have done the trick. Still some minor issues, such as tooltips not displaying properly, but the crashing ceased.

As I mentioned before, I'm running an ATI 44xx card.

[edtheuniquegeek]

Just as a follow up.

After formatting, reinstalling, and patching, the majority of the major issues were gone. However, I was still getting constant graphical glitches, and X11 would crash on my constantly. After a little research, I decided to try turning off notifications, and it seems to have done the trick. Still some minor issues, such as tooltips not displaying properly, but the crashing ceased.

As I mentioned before, I'm running an ATI 44xx card.

Do you load an ATI driver from the Additional Drivers tool or use from the default build of Mint?

[mank_in]

One of our forum member have same problem with gnome shell after update ,his solution is reinstall proprietary ATI driver.
see : Recent updates klled my Gnome 3 shell

[searle]

Do you load an ATI driver from the Additional Drivers tool or use from the default build of Mint?

Currently running default build. I was originally (before the updates) running the proprietary drivers, but I was having issues with those.

I may try out AMD's drivers again and see if there's any improvements with the notification system turned off.

[edtheuniquegeek]

I don't know of a fix for the ATI driver but maybe you can do what I did and revert back to an older driver. I'm back in a working Cinnamon environment now with no issues. I blogged about it.

http://www.edwardcrosby.com/2012/04/19/nvidias-older-driver-on-linux-mint-running-cinnamon/

[WeeDram]

My desktop is broken but I am unsure if my problem is with the same issues as mentioned above. I have been consistently updating, but rarely powerdown my system. I dual boot, and recently went back over to Win7 for an Itunes issue. When I returned to my Linux Mint 12 (Cinnamon), my linux system froze after the "checking Battery Status" and several lines of "Checking cache."..(I apologize I forgot to take notes on the final lines but will next time I reboot). I've had a problem with my system freezing after the "Checking Battery Status" in the past, but thought I had fixed it, since I haven't had a problem in some time. So I super key- F2 and login in and run sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install, which has helped in the past. I then ran startx.
Mint 12 comes up but I do not have toolbar, file manager icon, etc as mentioned by others above. I believe i'm now in MATE, vs. Cinnamon, as I have wobbly windows, and other effects that I believe I set in MATE prior to moving to Cinnemon.

I am a real newbie, and alhtough I have a certain amount of functionallity, I'm not sure what I should do to get my system back (specifically the toolbar). I am able to navigate into system settings, and could add additional drivers (ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver OR ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver, if the consensus is the nvidia drivers are the problem. (currently, my graphics are driven by Gallium 0.4 on AMD BARTS)

Obvioulsy I have internet connectivity which is a God send, so I can research the problem (and read your responses/solutions!).
Also I am unsure how to determine exactly whether i'm in MATE, Cinnamon, or Gnome 3, since I don't have the login screen to choose my environment (nor do I know how to change environments i.e. change over to MATE if I'm in GNOME 3)

Hope this wasn't too many issues within one post.