another upgrade problem - can't access GUI

[rst]

Hello,
I've just upgraded to 12.10 from 12.04. After reboot, I get to the purple screen with the dots that says something like Kubuntu 12.10.
It just hangs there, even if given a couple of hours. if I hit alt-function key (alt+F2 for example) I can log in to a shell.

(I have been reading several other threads on this forum, and the below logs seemed relevant)

/var/log/dmesg
contains:
alsa - restore main process terminated with status 99
KDM main process terminated with status 127

/var/log/kdm.log.1
contains:
klauncher kdemain No DBus session found. check if you have started the Dbus server.
KDE init 4: communication error with launcher. exiting

(I am posting this from a second operating system on the same machine, so the above lines are what I wrote down, and then retyped. transcription errors are probable.)

Any suggestions that will get me back into the gui would be much appreciated.
Happy to provide any requested logs or information.

Ray

[hallergard]

Sounds very much like the problems I had with upgrading until I stumbled into LightDM as instead of KDM as display manager. Twice I had to go back to my backup image (using partimage) after having insisted on using kdm as default manager, and I got stuck as you. (thread here re autologin with lightdm)

Sounds also very much like the problems I am still having when trying to change back from lighdm to kdm. Will attempt that once more and check the logs.

[hallergard]

No, I did not get the same log entries as you, but had this message in /var/log/syslog:

Oct 21 08:34:42 DESKTOP kdm[1274]: X server died during startup
Oct 21 08:34:42 DESKTOP kdm[1274]: X server for display :0 cannot be started, session disabled

Thought it might be possible to recover by editing /etc/X11/default-display-manager from /usr/sbin/kdm to /usr/sbin/lightdm or /usr/sbin/gdm - but no it did not work for me. Can somebody tell rst how to recover?!

[rst]

No, I did not get the same log entries as you, but had this message in /var/log/syslog:

Oct 21 08:34:42 DESKTOP kdm[1274]: X server died during startup
Oct 21 08:34:42 DESKTOP kdm[1274]: X server for display :0 cannot be started, session disabled

Thought it might be possible to recover by editing /etc/X11/default-display-manager from /usr/sbin/kdm to /usr/sbin/lightdm or /usr/sbin/gdm - but no it did not work for me. Can somebody tell rst how to recover?!

At the moment /etc/X11/default-display-manager contains
/usr/bin/kdm
none of
none of gdm, kdm, or lightdm exist in /usr/bin or /usr/sbin

[Snowhog]

From a console, install kdm.

sudo apt-get install kdm

Once it's installed, type:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure kdm

[rst]

thank you Snowhog and hallergard
I was actually logging back in ( in KDE now) to mention that installing kdm fixed the problem when I noticed Snowhog's post. I installed kdm and lightdm both and this appears to have triggered the reconfigure command automatically.

(I did have a little fun with network drivers, as a plasma widget controls the wireless, and the hard-wired driver has been broken for a while. Long story, but resolved now.)

The next question, is there a way to file a useful bug report? I can't imagine removing all *dm's during an update is a good, or normal, thing. Are there logs that would contain useful information, or would a bug report just end up as "something broke, I'm not sure what or how"? (obviously this kind of bug report would be less than useless)

[Guest]

I had this problem too it it seemed to be caused by two issues
1) The access bits for the lightdm directories were set so only lightdm user could read them (so the system couldn't read the files)
2) Lightdm was trying to load unity-greeter, I had to edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and change the greeter to lightdm-kde-greeter

Issue 1 seemed to be caused by dpkg installing lightdm-kde-greeter before lightdm I think. Installing lightdm then lightdm-kde-greeter seemed to fix that, I am not sure so I don't where to file a bug. This issue could be easily fix by someone who knows how debs are put together.

Issue 2 is a bit harder, at one time after my upgrade the kde greeter came up, but I was still having problems with issue 1 so opted for a reinstall. I have no clue where the lightdm.conf that is supposed to go with Kubuntu is located in the repository. It is not in lightdm, lightdm-kde-greeter, or kubuntu-default-settings (I tried reinstalling all of them)