complete freeze on boot with autologin enabled

[Daniel Abel]

Binary package hint: gdm

Installed i386 Karmic from installer cd, enabled 'log in automatically' during the install process. Did "aptitude full-upgrade", and now gdm freezes during boot: monitor is black, num-lock led doesn't react to toggling num lock key, no disk activity i.e. whole computer appears crashed.

Can boot by selecting 'recovery' option in grub menu, which gives a command-line login, after logging in there, can start GUI with 'startx' (which launches desktop, i.e. not gdm login screen).

My symptoms are basically the same as described in http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8211116&postcount=5
(except that in my case the freeze is with a completely blank screen).

Also (which might be related), I can't seem to unlock the gdm settings dialog (the one started with 'System->Administration->Login screen'): clicking on the unlock button has no effect, the widgets stay greyed-out. Starting gdmsetup from a root terminal, I get:
root@desktop:/etc/gdm# gdmsetup

** (gdmsetup:2319): WARNING **: Error calling GetValue('daemon/TimedLoginEnable'): The name org.gnome.DisplayManager was not provided by any .service files

** (gdmsetup:2319): WARNING **: Error calling GetValue('daemon/TimedLoginDelay'): The name org.gnome.DisplayManager was not provided by any .service files
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: init delay=30
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: GdmUserManager: Found current seat: /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Seat1
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: GdmUserManager: running 'ck-history --frequent --seat='Seat1' --session-type='''
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: GdmUserManager: explicitly skipping user: nobody
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: GdmUserManager: user icon changed
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: adding monitor for '/home/istvan/.face'
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: Getting list of sessions for user 1000
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: Found 1 sessions for user istvan
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: GdmUserManager: not adding session without a x11 display: /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session1
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: GdmUserManager: history output: istvan 4

** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: GdmUserManager: history output: root 4

** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: GdmUserManager: excluding user 'root'

** (gdmsetup:2319): WARNING **: Error calling GetValue('daemon/AutomaticLoginEnable'): The name org.gnome.DisplayManager was not provided by any .service files

** (gdmsetup:2319): WARNING **: Error calling GetValue('daemon/TimedLoginEnable'): The name org.gnome.DisplayManager was not provided by any .service files

** (gdmsetup:2319): WARNING **: Error calling GetValue('daemon/TimedLogin'): The name org.gnome.DisplayManager was not provided by any .service files
** (gdmsetup:2319): DEBUG: init user='(null)' auto=False

with
** (gdmsetup:2319): WARNING **: Failed to unlock: The name org.gnome.DisplayManager was not provided by any .service files
repeated every time I press the 'unlock' button.

I'll try disabling auto-login as described in that forum post, but even if that works, the bug is pretty serious: simply installing karmic and all updates makes the computer completely unusable for a non-pro user

[Daniel Abel (abeld)]

Disabling autologin by renaming /etc/gdm/custom.conf appears work as a work-around, i.e. it is possible to log in without having to user the recovery boot option and startx.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Do you still get the issue? Could you try on lucid?

[Daniel Abel (abeld)]

I don't have access to that computer any more, so I won't be able to reproduce it. If no-one else reported a similar bug, then I guess it can't be that serious, and this bug might as well be closed as non-reproducible.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for the update, let's close the bug then