Problems with Gnome Display Manager (gdm) authentication (Jaunty)

[xonev]

Hi, I just upgraded to 9.04 from 8.10. Everything appeared to go fine, but when I boot up, before it gets to the login screen, I get a blue background (looks like a xubuntu theme background) and a "busy" cursor that make it appear as though something is causing processing over and over again.

When I dig into the log files, indeed, that is what I find. For example:


#/var/log/syslog

...

Apr 29 09:50:02 sick-laptop gdm[5425]: WARNING: Couldn't authenticate user
Apr 29 09:50:33 sick-laptop last message repeated 25 times



#/var/log/auth.log

...

Apr 29 09:50:16 sick-laptop gdm[5425]: pam_nologin(gdm:auth): cannot determine username
Apr 29 09:50:47 sick-laptop last message repeated 27 times
Apr 29 09:51:49 sick-laptop last message repeated 51 times



#/var/log/gdm/:0.log

...

(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Wed Apr 29 09:57:04 2009
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
f000:4b9a: 01 ILLEGAL EXTENDED X86 OPCODE!


So it appears as though gdm is trying to auto-login (even though auto-login should be disabled according to the configuration files). Anyone have any ideas?

[xonev]

Here are the things I've tried so far:

Stop gdm -> startx

I switched to tty1 (ctrl-alt-f1), logged in, and stopped gdm by running /etc/init.d/gdm stop
I then ran startx - this gave me the "login" sound and my background picture with a cursor, but no icons or "taskbars" or anything useful.

Messing with the configuration file.

I am rather sure I know which configuration file gdm is using because for the output of ps aux | grep gdm I get a couple of lines with:


root ... /usr/sbin/gdm --config=/etc/gdm/gdm-cdd.conf

I've tried different variations of settings, but none seemed to have done anything (except when I turned debug on I did get some debug information in /var/log/syslog). I have tried:

Changing AutomaticLoginEnable=true and AutomaticLogin=sajo - nothing changes
Changing TimedLoginEnable=true TimedLogin=sajo TimedLoginDelay=0 because of something I read here: http://www.perturb.org/display/entry/812/ (this is in addition to having automatic login enabled).
Changing
UserAuthDir= to
UserAuthDir=~/
Changing User and Group to my username and group (still got the same error messages.

[xonev]

Alright, I've even tried running:


sudo apt-get remove --purge gdm

and then reinstalling it with


sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

and it is still giving the same problems. Could it be a problem with PAM possibly?

[mark_u23]

Hi this is my first post and fairly new to ubunto, dont know if my problem is the same as yours but sounds simliar.

Upgraded to ubunto 9.04 from 8.1. Upgrade asked to reboot, now when i start I only get the command line.

Login as me ok, then run - sudo/etc/init.d/gdm start - "Not starting Gnome Display manager (gmd) its not the default display manager"

Startx command logs me into gnome but i want my KDE desktop screen and login back as was using without problems in version 8.1.

Is this a similar problem to yours or should I start a new thread?

[xonev]

I believe that is a different problem. I think what you want to do is run /etc/init.d/kdm start. kdm is the desktop manager for KDE so that should get you logged into kde. However, since you're getting a command line instead of kdm starting up, it's possible that kdm wasn't installed into /etc/init.d/ properly. Then, I'm not sure what to do, but at least you'll have a starting point (you could try reinstalling the kdm package).

Speaking of KDE, I'm pretty sure I have definitely narrowed this problem down to being a gdm problem since I installed the kubuntu-desktop package, set kdm as my default desktop manager and now I can log into the KDE gui no problem.

[mark_u23]

Ok I will try that. Thanks
Its is strange tho because all was working fine before the update.

[xonev]

OK, I believe my problem has been resolved. I have deduced that the distribution upgrade did not complete successfully even though I did not get any errors stating that anything went wrong. I went to Update Manager to update my machine today and found that something had apparently gone wrong and that it wanted to do a "partial upgrade." I allowed it to do so and now I am able to use gdm again and log into the gnome environment without any apparent problems. Thank you for your help.