Black Screen After UP5 - gdm3??

[BCL]

Hi,

I recently updated to the LMDE-UP5. The update said it was successful.

However, when I try to boot into it, all I get is a black screen with a flashing (flickering, actually) cursor -- no prompt, just the under-bar cursor. And it doesn't take any keyboard entry.

I tried the previous kernel, same effect.

Booting into the troubleshooting mode gives a successful root command line. But I have no idea where to start looking for the cause of the problem.

Booting the previous kernel, when I got the black screen, I tried switching to a terminal and got one, but it disappeared after a few seconds. Switching back to it again brought it back, but it would continually disappear after a few seconds.

However, I managed to log in and run a few apps; here is what I got:
Running "top" displayed an entry for gdm3, and it was taking 70% cpu time, which is WAY much on my quad core machine. Also, 'sudo ps -aux' showed all entries, except the last few, were gdm3, each with a different PID. On a hunch, I ran it again, with similar results except, the PIDs were larger. This seems to indicate that gdm3 is loading repeatedly and endlessly.

Can someone please help me fix this?

Oh, my machine is an Alienware M17x-R2;
Processor: 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 520 @ 2.40GHz;
4GB RAM;
Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series.

[BCL]

OK, an update.

After much trial and error, I was able to get a copy of the listing from:

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sudo ps -aux

And here is a partial listing of the output:

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<snip>
root     16391  0.1  0.0  84048  3092 ?        S    20:35   0:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Display7755
root     16392  0.1  0.0  84048  3092 ?        S    20:35   0:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Display7756
root     16393  0.1  0.0  84048  3092 ?        S    20:35   0:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Display7757
root     16394  0.1  0.0  84048  3096 ?        S    20:35   0:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Display7758
root     16395  0.1  0.0  84048  3092 ?        S    20:35   0:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Display7759
<snip>

It just goes on like that for quite a while. And when I repeated the ps command, the end had new PIDs added. It seems to be growing without stop, continuing to add more incidents of that one command:

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/usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Displayxxxx

I still want to recover this installation. So, can anyone help me now? Any ideas what I can do -- short of reinstall?

[Myself]

Well, UP5 is basically the first real Total Disaster I've had with LMDE Xfce.

It did the update over night but it never stopped to ask the questions it should have and which it said it would at ask for at the start of the update - some one obviously forgot!!!
It said it was successful .... ...which it most certainly was not!!!!
There was a message about manually having to update Xfce but it refused to allow this.
I may as well have stuck with crappy Windowz!
Refused to logout and reboot - and when told to it cannot find Grub so stuck looking at a post BIOS screen!!!

Looks like I'm looking for a new much much much more reliable OS again!!!! Pity!!!

Been having alsorts of slow-downs and 'sticking' and lock-ups when using many programs, mainly Chrome/Flash and Liferea but even with Thunar (!!!), for about two months as I've not rebooted since the last Update ... ...so very Windowz like!!!

[BCL]

I was hoping that LMDE would save me from having to reload the OS every year or so. But I guess we are not at that stage where we can have a stable rolling upgrade yet.

I've reverted back to Mint -- it seems fairly solid -- and running Mint 13 now, but haven't installed it on my hard-drive, but rather on a key-drive. I figure, when upgrade time comes, I'll just get a new keydrive. That way, I always have a working OS to fall back to. (Windose is the very last resort for a fall back).

LMDE had warned of minor glitches, but quick fixes. However, UP5 was a major disaster, with no fix in sight.

[Myself]

Okay! I tried to update a clean working version of UP4 and basically LinuxMint seems to have acquired 'programmers' that Mickeysoft at Redmond probably fired.

I can update just about everything except the very Core of LMDE.
Installed all program, utility, and some OS updates - said 1761 files to update.

Trying to do the last 1024 files (515Mb) of updates and this is what I get:

W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... _amd64.deb
Hash Sum mismatch


W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... _amd64.deb
Hash Sum mismatch


W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... _amd64.deb
Hash Sum mismatch


W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... _amd64.deb
Hash Sum mismatch


W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... _amd64.deb
Hash Sum mismatch


W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... _amd64.deb
Hash Sum mismatch


W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... o2_all.deb
Hash Sum mismatch


W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... _amd64.deb
Hash Sum mismatch


W: Failed to fetch http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/mult ... _amd64.deb
Hash Sum mismatch

Seriously, did anyone actually bother to check and test this update!!!???

[zerozero]

Seriously, did anyone actually bother to check and test this update!!!???

quite a lot of people actually viewtopic.php?f=187&t=109005
tho your post raises some questions:
1- is this a clean 201204 installation that you are trying to upgrade to UP5 or a clone of your system with UP4 already installed? it's different and 1761 files seems a lot to a vanilla upgrade.
2- how do your sources.list look like?
3- how are you trying to upgrade? i understand from your post that you are doing partial updates. you should either use mintupdate (if you want a GUI) or apt update && apt dist-upgrade in the terminal (any other variation is a shortcut to disaster)

[BCL]

... your post raises some questions:
1- is this a clean 201204 installation that you are trying to upgrade to UP5 or a clone of your system with UP4 already installed? it's different and 1761 files seems a lot to a vanilla upgrade.
2- how do your sources.list look like?
3- how are you trying to upgrade? i understand from your post that you are doing partial updates. you should either use mintupdate (if you want a GUI) or apt update && apt dist-upgrade in the terminal (any other variation is a shortcut to disaster)

I don't know about others, but my LMDE was originally a clean install. And it had gone through a few updates in the past -- at least UP3 and UP4. All brought some problems, but I was able to fix or work-around most of them. LMDE-UP5 left me essentially locked out. I can only boot to a root CLI login, without network access. Anything else causes the problem I listed above (endless instances of gdm-simple-slave).

My sourses list is fine. And I did do a full update via MintUpdate.

If someone can tell me how to get the root CLI fully connected, I'm willing to try:

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apt update && apt dist-upgrade

[zerozero]

My sourses list is fine.

before UP3 http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1836 we had to change the multimedia and security repos.
also since the introduction of mdm has been a few reports about conflicts between gdm3 and mdm.