Desktop fails to start properly after 14.04 > 14.10

[Chris Johnston]

Yesterday I upgraded my laptop from 14.04 to 14.10 - after the upgrade, when I logged in, I saw Unity on the left with the icons I expected, and the bar across the top, however the time and date, network indicator icon, sound icon, etc were missing.. Clicking on any of the icons in Unity didn't load anything... Couldn't load the dash.. Keyboard shortcuts such as ctrl+alt+t failed to load the terminal.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: upstart 1.13.1-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-12.18-generic 3.16.1
Uname: Linux 3.16.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Sep 4 10:30:43 2014
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-06-29 (66 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140417)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=screen-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: upstart
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UpstartBugCategory: Session
UpstartRunningSessionCount: 1
UpstartRunningSessionVersion: upstart 1.13.1
UpstartRunningSystemVersion: init (upstart 1.13.1)
mtime.conffile..etc.X11.Xsession.d.99upstart: 2014-08-28T00:30:06
mtime.conffile..etc.cron.daily.upstart: 2014-08-28T00:35:25
mtime.conffile..etc.upstart.xsessions: 2014-08-28T00:30:06

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Thanks for reporting. Please modify /etc/X11/Xsession.d/99upstart as mentioned on irc and change the STARTUP variable to:

 STARTUP="upstart --user --debug 1>&2"

Then, logout and:

- login via console
- rm ~/.xsession-errors
- login graphically
- attach .xsession-errors

It doesn't appear that there is an issue with Upstart itself here but the .xsession-errors should give us further details.

What would be interesting to know is whether the graphical session experience is correct for a different / newly-created user on your system.

[Chris Johnston (cjohnston)]

http://paste.ubuntu.com/8234110/

I have tried with a guest user, but I will try now with a new user.

[Chris Johnston (cjohnston)]

Same behavior with a newly-created user

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

@cjohnston: are you using nvidia hardware? Do you get a full desktop if you 'sudo restart lightdm' from a console?

[Chris Johnston (cjohnston)]

Yes, nvidia hardware.. I get a desktop with the same issues if I do sudo restart lightdm

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

This sounds like a unity issue as I've seen no evidence of Upstart misbehaving yet. That .xsession-errors log would be useful to have if you can attach it though.

[Chris Johnston (cjohnston)]

James, the paste in comment 3 is .xsession-errors..

For fun, I installed nvidia-331 and I'm not back in business... I guess I will try upgrading lightdm again and see what it does.

[Stephen M. Webb (bregma)]

Just so I'm clear, the symptoms are that unity-panel service is not running (the contents of the black bar on the top of the screen) and that unity itself does not react to any input at all (not even when hovering the mouse over icons in the Launcher)?

if you could attach ~/.cache/upstart/unity7.log and ~/.cache/upstart/unity-panel-service.log that would be swell, too.

[Chris Johnston (cjohnston)]

Stephen, correct.. I installed nvidia-331 and now everything seems to be working except that the time doesn't show up in the top black bar.

[Andrea Azzarone (azzar1)]

Just the time or all the indicators?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for upstart (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Unity because there has been no activity for 60 days.]