[gentoo-user] Failed gnome3 upgrade

William Kenworthy · External Since: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 156

I am having problems with gnome3/X on an old Sony Vaio. Its had
gentoo/gnome2 on it for years but after this upgrade to gnome3 gdm stops
at a black screen with a rotating cursor.

So far I have tried 3.1.1 and 3.4.4 kernels plus rebuilding everything I
can think of. KMS looks like its set correctly (intel i915) The basic X
server can run using twm.

Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.

BillK

Philipp Riegger · External Since: Aug 23, 2006 Posts: 21

On 05.07.2012 14:00, William Kenworthy wrote:
> Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.

Hmm, do you have a user polkitd with invalid home directory in /etc/passwd?

Philipp

William Kenworthy · External Since: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 156

On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:24 +0200, Philipp Riegger wrote:
> On 05.07.2012 14:00, William Kenworthy wrote:
> > Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.
>
> Hmm, do you have a user polkitd with invalid home directory in /etc/passwd?
>
> Philipp
>
>

Not polkitd but a polkituser - what should I have?

polkituser:x:118:1021:added by portage for polkit:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin

BillK

Philipp Riegger · External Since: Aug 23, 2006 Posts: 21

On 05.07.2012 14:43, William Kenworthy wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:24 +0200, Philipp Riegger wrote:
>> On 05.07.2012 14:00, William Kenworthy wrote:
>>> Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.
>> Hmm, do you have a user polkitd with invalid home directory in /etc/passwd?
>>
>> Philipp
>>
>>
> Not polkitd but a polkituser - what should I have?
>
> polkituser:x:118:1021:added by portage for polkit:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin
>

I run ~amd64, there was a bug that the polkitd user was created with
invalid home and then politd or some other server could not be run.
Re-emerging the package some time later showed a message how to fix it.
No idea about polkituser though, can't find anything about that.

Philipp

Philipp Riegger · External Since: Aug 23, 2006 Posts: 21

On 05.07.2012 14:00, William Kenworthy wrote:
> Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.

BTW, you could check ~/.xsession-error (or something like this). Nice
logfile.

Philipp

William Kenworthy · External Since: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 156

On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:57 +0200, Philipp Riegger wrote:
> On 05.07.2012 14:00, William Kenworthy wrote:
> > Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.
>
> BTW, you could check ~/.xsession-error (or something like this). Nice
> logfile.
>
> Philipp
>
>

Except it never gets to login/select a user (the greeter doesnt appear)

I just set the xdm to kdm instead of gdm and it started and I am now
looking at a gnome3 desktop. Pressures off, I have X back Smile

Now I can debug in a more leisurely manner.

Thanks,
BillK

Alex Schuster · External Since: Dec 18, 2006 Posts: 103

William Kenworthy writes:

> On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:24 +0200, Philipp Riegger wrote:
> > On 05.07.2012 14:00, William Kenworthy wrote:
> > > Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.
> >
> > Hmm, do you have a user polkitd with invalid home directory
> > in /etc/passwd?

> Not polkitd but a polkituser - what should I have?
>
> polkituser:x:118:1021:added by portage for
> polkit:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin

I have a similar entry, but with UID 991. But I wonder why you don't have
a polkitd user. Maybe this is your problem? The entry should be like
this, at least for sys-auth/polkit-0.106-r7:

polkitd:x:129:991:added by portage for
polkit:/var/lib/polkit-1:/sbin/nologin

For me, it's still set to /var/empty, which also seems to work. When the
directory was /dev/null, one of the symptoms was Gnome3 refusing to
start. But maybe my setup is different because I'm on ~amd64, and the
polkitd user has been introduced by a version of polkit later than yours.

Wonko

Allan Gottlieb · External Since: Mar 08, 2005 Posts: 165

On Thu, Jul 05 2012, Philipp Riegger wrote:

> On 05.07.2012 14:43, William Kenworthy wrote:
>> On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:24 +0200, Philipp Riegger wrote:
>>> On 05.07.2012 14:00, William Kenworthy wrote:
>>>> Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.
>>> Hmm, do you have a user polkitd with invalid home directory in /etc/passwd?
>>>
>>> Philipp
>>>
>>>
>> Not polkitd but a polkituser - what should I have?
>>
>> polkituser:x:118:1021:added by portage for polkit:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin
>>
>
> I run ~amd64, there was a bug that the polkitd user was created with
> invalid home and then politd or some other server could not be
> run. Re-emerging the package some time later showed a message how to
> fix it. No idea about polkituser though, can't find anything about
> that.

Check out https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420269

I am currently running 0.106-r7, which has backed out most of the
problems. There was trouble with users polkitd and adm. Now with -r7 I
was able to remove my workarounds and have

adm:x:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/bin/false
polkitd:x:110:998:added by portage for polkit:/var/lib/polkit-1:/sbin/nologin

in /etc/passwd.

hth,
allan

William Kenworthy · External Since: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 156

On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 09:21 -0400, Allan Gottlieb wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 05 2012, Philipp Riegger wrote:
>
> > On 05.07.2012 14:43, William Kenworthy wrote:
> >> On Thu, 2012-07-05 at 14:24 +0200, Philipp Riegger wrote:
> >>> On 05.07.2012 14:00, William Kenworthy wrote:
> >>>> Any hints where to look next as the gdm logs arent very informative.
> >>> Hmm, do you have a user polkitd with invalid home directory in /etc/passwd?
> >>>
> >>> Philipp
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Not polkitd but a polkituser - what should I have?
> >>
> >> polkituser:x:118:1021:added by portage for polkit:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin
> >>
> >
> > I run ~amd64, there was a bug that the polkitd user was created with
> > invalid home and then politd or some other server could not be
> > run. Re-emerging the package some time later showed a message how to
> > fix it. No idea about polkituser though, can't find anything about
> > that.
>
> Check out https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420269
>
> I am currently running 0.106-r7, which has backed out most of the
> problems. There was trouble with users polkitd and adm. Now with -r7 I
> was able to remove my workarounds and have
>
> adm:x:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/bin/false
> polkitd:x:110:998:added by portage for polkit:/var/lib/polkit-1:/sbin/nologin
>
> in /etc/passwd.
>
> hth,
> allan
>

ahh, I have polkit-104-r1 ... looks like an upgrade is in order.

Job for tomorrow morning.

Thanks Alan and Alex.

BillK