Can't login after upgrade to LinuxMint 18.

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noob4242

Can't login after upgrade to LinuxMint 18.

Post by noob4242 »

Ok, so first of all, I am fairly new to LinuxMint and trying to transition from Windows, so please excuse any noob-ness.

I have been running LinuxMint 17.1 Cinnamon for a while, but wanted to upgrade so I followed the instructions to upgrade first to 17.3 and then to 18. I followed the instructions for doing this automatically from https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2316.

After the upgrade, I can no longer log into the desktop environment. Because I enabled auto-login for the install it first pops up this message:
"Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds. If you have not logged out yourself this could mean that there is some installation problem or that you may be out of diskspace. Try logging in with one of the failsafe sessions to see if you can fix this problem." There is also a checkbox with "View details (~/.xsession-errors file). When I click the box in has the following message:

"initctrl: Unable to connect to Upstarts: failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
syndaemon: no process found
mdm[1340]:GLib-CRITICAL: g_key_file_free: asseetion 'key_file != NULL' failed"

If I click ok, it brings me to the login screen with my user logins showing. If I try to login as either it just brings me right back to the login screen, with no error. I can connect through SSH just fine from my other computer

I tried the solution found at https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... -questions for this issue, but then I got an error trying to install cinnamon regarding unmet dependencies
-----------------------------------
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
cinnamon : Depends: cinnamon-common (= 2.8.8+rosa) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libcogl-pango15 (>= 1.15.8) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libcogl15 (>= 1.15.8) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libmozjs-24-0 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
--------------------------------------
if I try to install cinnamon-common is tells me it is already installed at has the latest version (30.07+sarah). Booting in safe mode doesn't work either. I have tried the suggestions from https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/482, but nothing seems to work and the install of cinnamon still throws the same message regarding dependencies. Thanks for your help.
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Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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thx-1138
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Re: Can't login after upgrade to LinuxMint 18.

Post by thx-1138 »

Generally speaking, upgrading from one point release to another, eg. from 17 to 18, isn't really recommended...it doesn't always work that great.
Now, from 17.1 to 17.3 and then to 18, things can get way much more complicated (as you already discovered above).
I'd strongly suggest backing up your personal data to an external drive & then doing a clean install (preferably of the latest 18.3)...
noob4242

Re: Can't login after upgrade to LinuxMint 18.

Post by noob4242 »

That is the nuclear option I was hoping to avoid so I don't have to set everything up again. Thankfully most of my data is on a separate drive so I can if necessary but was hoping not.
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thx-1138
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Re: Can't login after upgrade to LinuxMint 18.

Post by thx-1138 »

...noob4242 => https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... ade-option
Since you come from a windows environment, kinda think of it like 'upgrading' from Win7 say to Win8...it's not even possible. On Mint, sometimes indeed it might be possible & go error-free, and some other times it returns lots of dependency issues like above & not only, since the underlying code base has changed drastically...
noob4242 wrote:That is the nuclear option I was hoping to avoid so I don't have to set everything up again. Thankfully most of my data is on a separate drive so I can if necessary but was hoping not.
If you still have some valuable data left on that installation, you can still boot via a live cd / stick, and back them up...
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