Sessions not showing up (login screen)

[Ir0nMa1deN]

That little menu on the bottom doesn't show up for me. I just installed kde from synaptic and rebooted the computer. Since I have ubuntu set to automatically log me in it did and I manually logged out to get to the login screen and get into KDE. As I said before it didn't show up so I just logged back in and ran "startkde" in a terminal. The KDE desktop is there but the Ubuntu menu bar is still on the top (with some missing icons ) The KDE menubar on the bottom shows up with all the icons and everything but the minimized windows are all messed up (like shadow text or something). Anyway, is there some way for me to get the SESSIONS menu onto my login screen so that I can get into KDE the normal way?

[Krytarik]

Did you mind that you have to enter/click your username before, to get those Session options!?

[doublewitt]

I'm having a similar problem:

the normal login screen does not appear, and the bottom toolbar either - all I have is a direct login screen to the kde desktop - and from there, i cannot choose gnome anymore...

what happened...? I wouldn't know!
how can I fix this?
any help would be appreciated...

[Krytarik]

@doublewitt: Are you somehow able to provide a screenshot of those screen? Because I don't really know what you have there, it may be KDM (instead of GDM), but those should also provide the session options.

[doublewitt]

@doublewitt: Are you somehow able to provide a screenshot of those screen? Because I don't really know what you have there, it may be KDM (instead of GDM), but those should also provide the session options.

I don't know how to make a screenshot when the KDM screen appears... but there is no "option" to choose session (GDM)...

[Krytarik]

Check if "gdm" is installed:

dpkg -l|grep gdm

If so, use this command to choose it:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

If not, install it:

sudo apt-get install gdm

[doublewitt]

Thanks - this helped somewhat. This is what I got in the terminal:

doublewitt@InfoDesk:~$ dpkg -l|grep gdm
ii gdm 2.30.2.is.2.30.0-0ubuntu5 GNOME Display Manager
rc gdm-guest-session 0.15 gdm extension for guest session
ii python-gdm2setup 0.5.3-lucid-1 GDM2 Setup utility and libraries
doublewitt@InfoDesk:~$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm
[sudo] password for doublewitt:
doublewitt@InfoDesk:~$ sudo apt-get install gdm
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gdm is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
doublewitt@InfoDesk:~$


now when I restart my computer, the normal login window does appear - but - on the bottom toolbar, the available sessions are KDE and XTERM - no GNOME...

[Krytarik]

Assuming that you still have Gnome installed, check the available sessions in "/usr/share/xsessions". There should be

gnome.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=GNOME
Comment=This session logs you into GNOME
Exec=gnome-session
TryExec=gnome-session
Icon=
Type=Application
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-session-2.0

gnome-failsafe.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Failsafe GNOME
Comment=This session logs you into GNOME without user applications
Exec=gnome-session -f
TryExec=gnome-session
X-GDM-FailSafe=true
Icon=
Type=Application
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-session-2.0

To check if Gnome is indeed installed:

dpkg -l|grep ubuntu-desktop

This checks for the usual Ubuntu Gnome metapackage. You can also check for "gnome", this should list quite a number of packages.

[doublewitt]

In the folder you mention, I only have the two (KDE and xterm). So what happened to Gnome...?! Anyways, the gnome and the gnome-failsafe are NOT there. I guess there is a way to fix that. Ofcourse, that's beyond me...

running the command in the terminal: dpkg -l|grep ubuntu-desktop
does nothing.

@Krytarik - thanks for your help thus far... I feel like we're getting closer to the solution...

[Krytarik]

running the command in the terminal: dpkg -l|grep ubuntu-desktop
does nothing.

LOL Then you might have removed it by following one of those instructions to install KDE!?
Anyway, just install it then:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop