lightdm won't start please see errors listed

[petermg]

Just upgraded from 11.10 to 12.04. Machine is a netbook LT4004u, made by Gateway. 11.10 was working great, no problems. After upgrading here is my issue, seems lightdm won't start correct, so basically I have no X session. Here is what I've tried.

When going to tty1 I type
sudo lightdm and an xsession tries to start, or so it seems, but when I go back to tty1 I see
** (lightdm:1313): WARNING **: Could not get accounts proxy: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.Accounts: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.Permi ssionsInvalid: The permission of the setuid helper is not correct

** (lightdm:1313): WARNING **: Could not get accounts proxy: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.freedesktop.Accounts: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.Permi ssionsInvalid: The permission of the setuid helper is not correct

Yes it shows twice for some reason.

Oh and even though at tty1 is says I'm using 12.04, on the tty7 where the Xsession usually runs, it says Ubuntu 11.10!? Is it possible my upgrade didn't fully take?????? It said it was ready to reboot, it didn't give me any errors during the update/upgrade...?

Oh and when I do a
lightdm --test-mode I get
Failed to get D-Bus connection

[Toz]

The command should be:

sudo service lightdm restart

And lightdm log files can be found at /var/log/lightdm. There might be some clues there as to why its not starting.

[petermg]

Ok well I ran dpkg --configure -a and now I'm able to get into lightdm no problem but seems like none of my programs come up when I click on the search and start typing.... nice. I have a feeling this is going to be a learning experience. I have my shortcuts on my launcher, but if I type oh say "term" in the search area, it says "Sorry, there is nothing that matches your search." What gives?

[Toz]

Does:

unity --reset &
...fix that issue? If you don't have a terminal on the dash, you can start one with Ctrl+Alt+T.

[chrb]

Maybe your upgrade didn't complete?

Try 'apt-get install -f'

[jdthood]

Thanks for the suggestion. I had the same problem --- lightdm wouldn't start --- and on trying "apt-get -f install" I discovered that scores of packages had yet to be upgraded. The upgrade process had aborted early because /var/lib/dpkg/status had become corrupted by a badly formatted Description field in a third-party package.

[rgm3]

Thanks for the suggestion. I had the same problem --- lightdm wouldn't start --- and on trying "apt-get -f install" I discovered that scores of packages had yet to be upgraded. The upgrade process had aborted early because /var/lib/dpkg/status had become corrupted by a badly formatted Description field in a third-party package.

Thanks for sharing. Same thing happened to me. My lexmark printer driver had a malformed description line in two files, /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/available. When i fixed those, i was able to continue installation.

[afrodeity]

me too, a few packages including lexmark printer had malformed description lines for some reason.

[shahverdy]

same problem here :(

[molhokwai]

Hello all,

Just wanted to say Thank you: Issues solved: Sound cards, external drives mounts, and display back... (all systems nominal)
It was all because of an interrupted update.

Here is the fix process:


>sudo apt-get -f install

...asked for:


>sudo dpkg --configure -a

...completed. Then:


>sudo apt-get -f install

...optionally asked for:


>sudo apt-get autoremove

.And finally:


>sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm restart

Fixed the issues...

Thanks again, all.

[yujiangang1025]

I did the same thing as you suggested, but the problem is still there

[mingiwu]

I have the same problem. I checked out log files: /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log and /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log
then I knew the problem comes from /var/lib/lightdm/.Xauthority
I solved this problem by removing /var/lib/lightdm and reinstall lightdm. (It will create a new /var/lib/lightdm directory.)
I also have to delete the ~/.Xauthority or I can't login from greeter.