Installed lightdm - now boot crashes - no recovery (Solved)

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Hiero2

Installed lightdm - now boot crashes - no recovery (Solved)

Post by Hiero2 »

I got tired of typing my name in mdm - so I installed lightdm, no apparent problems. It asked which one I wanted to use as a default. I think, Ok, looking good, right! (right?) I said lightdm.

Now, I boot, and i get errors, and mint won't boot. Won't boot in recovery, either. Startup says mdm is not default, and it is shutting it down, something about a pipe and can't write, and stopping systemV compatability. Same thing each time, but I had to boot into windows to write this. I can't boot mint no way. Not regular, not recovery. Same messages both ways.

What do I do now? I don't particularly want to reinstall from scratch - lot of work, that.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
viking777

Re: Installed lightdm - and now boot crashes - no recovery

Post by viking777 »

Installing lightdm is not enough, when installed you have to set it as default by running the command:

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
Boot up mint and when it fails hit ctl/alt/f1 Hopefully this will put you into a virtual terminal where you can login and run that command. If you can't reach a virtual terminal like that you will have to use a chroot environment from a live cd which isn't quite so easy - start googling!
Hiero2

Re: Installed lightdm - and now boot crashes - no recovery

Post by Hiero2 »

Thanks, viking! Ctrl-alt-F1 worked. Yup - I thought about doing the chroot bit last night - but fortunately I don't have to do all the drive mounting and all.

However, something in the lightdm install was borked - the dpkg-reconfigure did not work. So, I used dpkg-reconfigure to reset it to mdm, and I'm back in business. I'll have to review the installation of lightdm when I get some time!

TY!
anandrkris

Re: Installed lightdm - now boot crashes - no recovery (Solv

Post by anandrkris »

I faced a similar issue in my laptop which runs Linux Mint KDE and had to revert to KDM. I too used ctl/alt/f1 though recovery worked for me.
Seems like a video driver issue as commented in the post....
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