24.04 unusable after Gnome-Tweaks change to the mouse pointer

[Ken]

I have posted the following at :https://askubuntu.com/questions/1511731/cant-log-into-24-04-and-22-04-wont-boot-since-post-installation-bug-blasted-gr

I have two SSDs. 22.04, 23.10 & Windows are installed on one and I just installed 24.04 on the other. I first created a new partition by shrinking the /home partition and creating the new partition in the now unused space.

I downloaded Gnome-Tweaks to 24.04 and when I changed the pointer, the graphics display blew up and was replaced with a white screen with a picture of a sad face on a computer and:

"Oh no! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Please log out and try again."

No mouse pointer is present, only a button that says Log Out, which when pressed takes me back to the login screen.

I reinstalled 24.04 from a Live USB as before. The grub menu is the same as it was, but nothing changed when I logged into 24.04, same white screen. Then I rebooted and selected 22.04, but this now never even gets to the login screen. Instead I get five lines of error text followed by: "You are in emergency mode." I can do nothing from this point.

I can boot fine to Windows and also 23.10, which I'm using to write this. My files are in another partition and seem fine.

Help! Is there a way I can recover my system? Thanks.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Libera.chat.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/2063888/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Ken (kens2)]

Thanks, I visited the edit tool and searched for 'gnome', but there are no packages to choose from, so I have not updated the bug report.

[Ken (kens2)]

Update. I deleted (renamed) the .config dir from my home dir and now can log into 24.04. I still cannot successfully boot to 22.04 though. Recovery mode works partially, but fsck fails on a particular partition. However what I believe is the same partition can be successfully accessed from 24.04.

[aki (akiei)]

I also ran into this problem by changing my cursor in gnome-tweaks to RedGlass (I later confirmed it also happens with other cursor themes, so seems it is not specific...). I am not sure if this can solve your problem with 22.04, but for anyone else who runs into this issue and lands here, I managed to recover by doing the following:

1. entering tty3 (cntrl-alt-f3)

2. logging in,

3. and then running the following to reset the cursor theme:

```
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-theme 'Yaru'
```

4. then reboot with `sudo reboot 0`.

I don't know the cause, but hopefully this advice can help somebody...

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Ken (kens2)]

Thanks, aki, for the info. In the end, I did it a different way. First, I realised my 22.04 boot issue was that a partition got reformatted during 24.04 installation and the UUID was changed. I had to edit the 22.04 /etc/fstab file to replace the old UUID with the new so that 22.04 would boot. Once I was back in 22.04, I restored my .config dir and logged back in to find that the change to RedGlass was working. So I ran gnome-tweaks and changed it back to Yaru, rebooted to 24.04 and all is fine.

Of course, will be avoiding gnome-tweaks until the fix comes through...

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 2062377, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report.

Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Jonathan Gilbert (logiclrd)]

Hello :-) I don't really know much about what's going on but I just encountered this exact problem. I wasn't able to log in because Xorg would immediately display the sad computer screen. I found another post, though, where someone said that installing the `breeze` package worked. I tried it and it got me back to my desktop.

Step 1: From login screen, Ctrl-Alt-F4
Step 2: Log in
Step 3: sudo apt install breeze

If your experience is like mine, this will allow you to log in once more. Your cursor selection from gnome-tweaks will be ineffectual, but it will now have a fallback that allows you to use the system again.

(I was using "whiteglass".)