Upgrade from Mint15(64) to Mint16(64), now error at GRUB

[gingerichkr]

Just did an upgrade from Mint 15 Cinn x64, to Mint 16 Cinn x64. Most options for configurations were kept the same and terminal messages displayed no errors during upgrade. After upgrade I ran "sudo apt-get upgrade" with no errors and rebooted.
Upon boot, GRUB loaded and I chose Mint 16, screen went black and all I get is an error: "ERROR There is an error loading theme mdm"
All I can do is select "OK" then all I have is a black screen. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
(Tried booting in recovery mode to check and fix grub, file systems, etc. to no avail. Tried using a GRUB Boot Repair disk with no luck)

System is dual-boot, Win 7 / Mint, Grub loader is on Mint's HD, NVidia GeForce 6150 SE nForce 430 Graphics card (chose not to reconfigure proprietory driver during upgrade)

[WharfRat]

gingerichkr,

Since you were able to select mint from the grub menu, grub isn't the problem. Your problem seems to be with the mint display manager (mdm)

The only thing I can suggest is to boot in recovery mode and try reinstalling mdm and mint-mdm-themes. When you get into recovery mode you might have to remount / read/write as it's normally read only.

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sudo i

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mount -o remount,rw  / 

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apt--get install --reinstall mdm mint-mdm-themes

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reboot

Good luck

[gingerichkr]

Thanks' for the response. Tried the fix, but no luck. Went ahead and did a fresh install, using ISO. This worked. Don't really understand the problem that came up... maybe something remained configured from Mint 15 (with mdm)?

[WharfRat]

Thanks' for the response. Tried the fix, but no luck. Went ahead and did a fresh install, using ISO. This worked. Don't really understand the problem that came up... maybe something remained configured from Mint 15 (with mdm)?

If you manually chose mount points when you installed over 15 and didn't check the format button then that's a possibility. If you did format the partition then I'm at a loss for an explanation

In any event you got it working after re installation so the second time's the charm for you

Enjoy

[Solcat]

This is the EXACT same problem I am having and I am at a loss as to how to solve it especially since I thought that my /home and software settings were backed up only to find that they are not. I don't even mind going back to 15, I just need to know what to do to keep my existing data/files/ect.
Any help would be really appreciated, it was a total noob mistake, I've only been using Linux since July and thought I could upgrade while keeping my existing preferences.
Halp!

[WharfRat]

Solcat,

How did you do the upgrade ?

What video card do you have and which video driver were you using

If you just want to recover some files that's easy. You'll just need some type of media to copy the files to e.g., a flash drive or another hard drive.

[MartianStorm]

I have the same problem, I upgraded on my laptop using apt and it worked fine. So I tried it on my desktop too, and now I get the error message "There was an error loading the theme SpaceRace" instead of the login screen.
During upgrade grub complained the UUID is not matching (I transfered the system earlier from an HDD to an SSD, but I reinstalled and reconfigured grub, so the UUID should have been matching, everything worked before the upgrade), so grub was reinstalled to the MBR of the system disk, and now the menu entries are Ubuntu, not LinuxMint. When I try to use chroot I get error messages, when I try to reinstall grub I get the error message "grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of /cow." and then it says installation finished no errors... but nothing changes when the system boots up.

Edit: I just did a backup with the LiveDVD and made a clean install.

[blackend]

I have the the same problem after upgrading from linux mint 15 to 16, it is not GRUB problem.
the problem is mdm cann't load previous mdm theme from my previous linux mint.

my workaround to fix this problem :
1. go to console (press "ctrl+alt+F1" or "ctrl+alt+F2")
2. login
3. enter your desktop with this code

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startx

4. go to login screen settings and pick a theme
5. log out
6. after going back to console, restart mdm

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sudo service mdm restart

or

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sudo service mdm stop

and then

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sudo service mdm start

[NuxNubkins]

I attempted an in-place upgrade on my desktop from Mint 15 KDE to Mint 16 KDE RC. There's certainly an issue with mdm when upgrading like this. A completely fresh install solves it, as it wipes out any previous configuration. I attempted purging mdm and reinstalling it from a console only login, but it did not work. When I was able to successfully start x, it was having fits. Windows were only displaying in default locations and with default sizes (the upper left of the screen and something like 800x600 pixels). The controls to minimize, maximize and close windows were missing. The panel did not show any tasks, nor did it update the notification area (system tray). As I said, I performed a clean install, without installing any backups afterward to fix the issue. I don't have a great many packages I run, and the data I want to work with within Mint is on Dropbox, so fresh installs are a breeze for me. Probably not so for most Linux users.

[donovanmuller]

Hi all,

I had the exact same problem.

I upgraded from Nadia (14) to Petra (16) by changing sources.list and apt-get dist-upgrade method.
I tried re-installing mdm mint-mdm-themes with no luck.

On a hunch I commented out this line in:

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/etc/mdm/mdm.conf

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[security]

[xdmcp]
...

# Commented out this line
#HTMLTheme=mdm

[chooser]
...

restarted mdm and all back to normal.

[Solcat]

I managed to fix it without having to do a fresh install so figured I'd share what worked in case anyone else has the same problem and is headdesking as much as I was


1. go to console (press "ctrl+alt+F1" or "ctrl+alt+F2")
2. login (pretty sure I logged in as root for this but not 100% sure)

apt-get remove mdm
apt-get purge mdm
apt-get install
apt-get autoremove
apt-get install -f
reboot

On reboot everything was as it should be, Mint 16 log in screen popped up and all my previous settings were intact except for my old wallpaper and conky but that was an easy fix