kde won't start after updates

[timek718]

I installed last night's updates, there were a surprising number. When I started up my desktop this morning, there was only the login prompt. When I try to login with username & password, there's some activity, and then the login screen again. I can login via the console. Thinking that I had only done a partial update, I ran sudo apt-get update and checked for upgrades. There were some KDE updates, but that did not help.

When I run startx from the command line, it exits with a couple of errors. The most noteworthy of which is

(EE) Failed to load module fglrx

The other errors are complaints about not finding the fglrx module or something else fglrx-related.

The desktop does use a Radeon 3300 HD. But I never installed the AMD driver. I thought maybe if I installed the fglrx package, it would fix itself. Unfortunately, that did not work. There was only screen corruption.

I checked to see if maybe I needed to select default or safe mode for session type. That did not work either. FWIW, only default and safe mode were listed for session types. Could the updates have corrupted KDM's config or something similar?

Any ideas?

[pisacksen]

Re: kde won't start after updates

It appears that kubuntu-desktop, kwin-manager (?) and other items were identified for removal. If you did the update, your system became unresponsive for KDE. I fell into the trap and had to re-image when I had a similar experience as you are describing.

[Snowhog]

Re: kde won't start after updates

IF kubuntu-desktop got removed, just re-install it:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

I've been running 11.10 since 09-24-2011 (Daily Build 21-Sep-2011), and have been performing checks for updates every time I boot into it. I've not had any problems - none. Makes me wonder if Bob Kowalski and you might be performing 'upgrades' as opposed to 'dist-upgrades', and maybe more specifically, you are clicking on the update notifier icon in the system tray, and then letting it perform the updates. I NEVER do that. No matter if the update notifier appears in the system tray, I open a console and perform the following two actions:

sudo apt-get update

This forces another update to the package cache (not really necessary, as that has already been done, but...)

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

There is a big difference between apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade.

upgrade
      upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system from the sources enumerated in /etc/apt/sources.list. Packages currently installed with
      new versions available are retrieved and upgraded; [u][b]under no circumstances are currently installed packages removed, or packages not already installed retrieved and installed[/b][/u]. [i]New
      versions of currently installed packages that cannot be upgraded without changing the install status of another package will be left at their current version[/i].

dist-upgrade
      dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also [u][b]intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages[/b][/u]; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution
      system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the expense of less important ones if necessary. So, [u][i]dist-upgrade command may remove some packages[/i][/u].

Given that dist-upgrade can remove installed packages, using this option (as opposed to 'upgrade') might scare some users from wanting to use it. If one is using the standard *Ubuntu* repositories, including *trusted* third-party repositories (Medibuntu as an example), and doesn't have *exotic* PPA's and/or manually retrieved/installed applications, then using the 'dist-upgrade' option to apt-get is, in my experience, very safe. And, as I stated, I have never had it adversely affect my systems.

[vinnywright]

Re: kde won't start after updates

+1 on what @Snowhog has sead .

I am fully up to date and last nights/this mornings updates had no ill affect on my system.

but I do a

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

as well

HP-G62 running 11.04 & 11.10 8)

VINNY

[timek718]

Re: kde won't start after updates

It appears that kubuntu-desktop, kwin-manager (?) and other items were identified for removal. If you did the update, your system became unresponsive for KDE. I fell into the trap and had to re-image when I had a similar experience as you are describing.

On the off chance that kubuntu-desktop & the like were inadvertently removed, I booted to the command line & it turned out that kubuntu-desktop & kwin-manager & a couple of other packages had been removed.

Unfortunately, this did not fix my problem completely. Now the computer starts the process of loading the desktop, but then bounces right back to the login prompt. The process of start up goes further than it had been going, but not far enough.

Any other suggestions for packages to check? At least the problem has been identified, eg the removal of necessary packages.

Any other suggestions for packages to check?

[Snowhog]

Re: kde won't start after updates

In the past, a 'log in loop' condition, which is what you appear to be experiencing, is/can be caused by a root partition that is near capacity (almost totally used). This can be checked by rebooting and selecting recovery (single user) mode from the Grub menu (second menu entry). When at the prompt, type:

df

You'll get a listing similar to:

Filesystem      1K-blocks   Used Available [b]Use% Mounted on[/b]
/dev/sda9       15481840  3475588 11219820 [b]24% /[/b]
udev          1915004     4  1915000  1% /dev
tmpfs          770376    872  769504  1% /run
none           5120     0   5120  0% /run/lock
none          1925932   1720  1924212  1% /run/shm
/dev/sda10      51606140  501652 48483048  2% /home

Pay attention to the Use% stat on your mounted root partition. If it is at 95% or higher, this is likely the cause of the looping problem. It means that you need to do housecleaning on your root partition - remove files no longer needed to free up space.

IF the above is true, then the first thing to remove are the downloaded .deb packages in the package cache (they accumulate every time packages are updated or you download new applications). To clean the cache, you have two choices - remove every package, or remove those 'no longer needed' as reported by apt. I prefer to remove them all, so I use:

sudo apt-get clean

clean
      clean clears out the local repository of retrieved package files. It removes everything but the lock file from /var/cache/apt/archives/ and /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/. When APT is
      used as a dselect(1) method, clean is run automatically. Those who do not use dselect will likely want to run apt-get clean from time to time to free up disk space.

If all you want is to remove packages from the cache that are 'no longer needed', use autoclean instead:

autoclean
      Like clean, autoclean clears out the local repository of retrieved package files. The difference is that it only removes package files that can no longer be downloaded, and are largely
      useless. This allows a cache to be maintained over a long period without it growing out of control.

Afterwards, check your usage stats again:

df

You should see a reasonable decrease in the used space on the root partition. Then shutdown/restart and try logging normally.

[timek718]

Re: kde won't start after updates [solved]

Well, it turns out my problem had 2 parts. First I probably ran apt-get upgrade instead of apt-get dist-upgrade. Reinstalling missing packages fixed that part of the problem. The second part was fixed when I installed the fglrx driver.

Why my system suddenly needed the fglrx drive, I don't know. I'm happy that I can at least get to my linux desktop.