"Safe Updates" to LMDE 2 MATE Breaks Desktop <<< FYI ONLY >>>

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jon4t2

"Safe Updates" to LMDE 2 MATE Breaks Desktop <<< FYI ONLY >>>

Post by jon4t2 »

Here's something I thought the LMDE 2 MATE crew should know.

Over this last weekend I installed LMDE 2 (Betsy) MATE on a 32-bit and a 64-bit box. The installations went flawlessly. Unfortunately, applying all the "safe updates" (1s and 2s) -- and only the "safe updates" -- to both systems broke the desktop. Specifically, the desktop did not load: no menus, no tray, no icons -- just a black screen with the mouse pointer (that worked). The login screen worked, as did the "Welcome" screen which started automatically. Applications selected from the "Welcome" screen also worked.

I did some digging around on the Web and on the affected boxes and figured out that there was a conflict between gtk components (IIRC, gtk-2.x vs. gtk-3.x). I did a little more digging around and decided that trying to repair these LMDE 2 MATE installations would be a waste of my time. So I installed LMDE 2 (Betsy) Cinnamon instead.

The LMDE 2 Cinnamon installations went flawlessly. Applying all the "safe updates" (1s and 2s) -- and only the "safe updates" -- also went flawlessly. Both systems appear to be working well.

Since LMDE 2 Cinnamon works, I'll leave it to the MATE folks to figure out what needs to be fixed within the "safe updates" tree.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DBO

Re: "Safe Updates" to LMDE 2 MATE Breaks Desktop <<< FYI ONLY >>>

Post by DBO »

I am not sure if my experience was the same as yours, but 2 of my systems broke during updates due to the screen saver coming on, and although I could get flickers of the desktop while trying to get it off, it would not budge meaning after a decent amount of time I had to alt-control + backspace to logout and reboot thus breaking the desktop. I suspect that the installer was waiting on some interaction from the user which was not able to do due to the screensaver being locked on.
While I was able to fix the broken packages with sudo dpkg -- configure -a and run apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, (alt shift + t to bring up a terminal window) it still left no desktop, a welcome screen and a black background with no menus or anything, just the pointer. On you advise about Cinnamon, I installed the Cinnamon desktop, which showed updates available, including many parts of the Mate desktop. Installing those and logging back in with Mate desktop showed it was fixed.
I looked at the other system and ran in terminal mintupdate to bring the update utility up, installed the updates and fixed that one too.

Point is, disable the screen saver when doing the large batches of updates!
Monsta
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Re: "Safe Updates" to LMDE 2 MATE Breaks Desktop <<< FYI ONLY >>>

Post by Monsta »

jon4t2 wrote:Unfortunately, applying all the "safe updates" (1s and 2s) -- and only the "safe updates" -- to both systems broke the desktop. Specifically, the desktop did not load: no menus, no tray, no icons -- just a black screen with the mouse pointer (that worked).
Looks like this bug.
Monsta
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Re: "Safe Updates" to LMDE 2 MATE Breaks Desktop <<< FYI ONLY >>>

Post by Monsta »

Should be fixed now with mintUpdate 5.2.9.1.
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