ubuntu struck on login screen, message: 'the configuration defaults for the gnome power manager has not been installed correctly'

[Dushyant]

I am running Ubuntu 9.10. After a routine update, the system asked for a restart; after which it popped up a warning: INSTALL PROBLEM: "the configuration defaults for the GNOME Power Manager have not been installed correctly. Please contact your computer administrator." From then many things have changed. My Ubuntu is not starting at all, so there's little I can do dirctly except from live-cd, and my disk is far too filled to be reinstalled. Can someone please help me with sorting out this problem?
Thanks

[Monkey (monkey-libre)]

I´ve assigned this bug to the gnome-power-manager package. Thank You for making Ubuntu better.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Justin Christian (slackbassist)]

Bug confirmed on my system. What seems to be happening is, after login, gnome (xfce as well) is crashing and restarting the X server. Stopping gdm/killing X and then using startx in the terminal seems to cause a loop of some sort, as I am sent to a black screen, and I can't raise elephants.

- dpkg-reconfigure gnome-power-manager has no effect;
- I was prompted by apt-get to run dpkg --configure -a, which had no effect
- reinstalling gnome-power-manager has no effect.

System is Xubuntu 9.10 running fglrx.

[Cris (cstanus)]

I have a similar problem.
In recovery mode I manually reinstalled gnome-power-manager and gnome-settings-daemon (based on advice found on Ubuntu support forums, I am a newbie to Ubuntu). The message "the configuration defaults for the GNOME Power Manager have not been installed correctly. Please contact your computer administrator." disappeared, but after prompting for password I still get a flickering screen and the system asks for the password again.

[toddq (toddq)]

I fairly certain that this bug is caused by having a full disk. However, the normal solutions for resolving such a problem (e.g., deleting some files) didn't work for me. The advice given at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/38900 and
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bootcd/+bug/38894 and https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+question/38900 did not address the problem for me but clearly these are related bugs.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so we are closing it and converting it to a question in the support tracker. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise problems you are having in the support tracker at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu if you are uncertain if they are bugs. For help on reporting bugs, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#When%20not%20to%20file%20a%20bug.

[toddq (toddq)]

I believe there must be two bugs. Some people are claiming that they can login at the prompt while others state that they cannot. This bug relates to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1355880, https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/441646?comments=all, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1355880, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/441646, https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/38900, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bootcd/+bug/38894

All claimed solutions work for people who can login. There doesn't appear to be a solution for people who cannot. ITo summarize what I read, it may be that for those people who cannot login, that this is a problem relating to a full disk.

[toddq (toddq)]

Obviously, it's a bug they don't want to fix or address. It obviously isn't just a question . The problem only occurs when your disk is full. It only happens after an upgrade and it does not allow you to delete information. As noted in the existing questions about this bug. It is a bug and is cited as such in notes. Thankfully, Chris was unable to delete all of these bug reports (see above).

[orlcam2002 (orlcam2002)]

Not sure why they made this into a question as it's a bug. Regardless if the real cause is the disk being full, the message is not compatible to the real cause. If I didn't find links to this issue, I would not have know that my disk is full therefore affecting the login. This is an unexpected result.

from wikipedia:
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy. Reports detailing bugs in a program are commonly known as bug reports, fault reports, problem reports, trouble reports, change requests, and so forth.

[BuAmi (basil-p)]

I have the same issue. I was backing up an external HDD with TestDisk and my primary HDD was full. When I restarted ubuntu, it is stuck on login screen. I started in the recovery mode and I tried to delete the newly backup files, from the root, but it says permission denied. I am using Ubuntu 9.10 x64 dual boot with Windows 7

[toddq (toddq)]

BuAmi

I created a new bug report with more details. If you are having the same problem. Note it here https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/539959

[toddq (toddq)]

As noted by the comments above, this is a bug. It may be a duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/539959 and
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/441646

[Francis De Brabandere (francisdb)]

I can confirm my HD was full when I had this issue, freeing up some space and rebooting fixed it.

[Dushyant (juneja-dushyant)]

I also had my HD full when the bug came, but freeing space did not fix the
problem.

Dushyant

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 1:48 AM, Francis De Brabandere
<email address hidden>wrote:

> I can confirm my HD was full when I had this issue, freeing up some
> space and rebooting fixed it.
>
> --
> ubuntu struck on login screen, message: 'the configuration defaults for the
> gnome power manager has not been installed correctly'
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/521640
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>