Comment 9 for bug 1257927

I got my Linux Mint 16 into this same state without ever touching aptitude or mongodb. It seemed to occur after some regular updates, I don't do anything out of the ordinary with my Mint install, but when I logged back in I got the blank screen with the "LM" icon floating in the middle. I can ALT-LEFT and get to terminal, run "sudo mdm", and get to the login screen, however immediately after logging in I get "Session Failed" with a detailed error message:

"cinnamon-session-cinnamon" not found; falling back to default session.
localuser:jyennaco being added to access control list
Script for cjkv started at run_im.
Script for default started at run_im.
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Failed to connect to the VirtualBox kernel service
Script for cjkv started at run_im.
Script for default started at run_im.
x-session-manager[7996]: WARNING: Unable to find required component 'cinnamon'
x-session-manager[7996]: WARNING: Unable to find required component 'cinnamon-screensaver'
x-session-manager[7996]: WARNING: Unable to find required component 'nemo-autostart'

(note also at this time by Wifi wasn't working, I had to plug in. I saw another forum where someone had these same 2 seemingly different problems)

Naturally form the terminal I ran:

sudo apt-get --purge remove cinnamon && sudo apt-get install cinnamon
sudo apt-get install cinnamon-screensaver
sudo apt-get install nemo

After rebooting I was able to log in using "sudo mdm" and logging in, I was got to my desktop! However, cinnamon still does not start on a normal boot without sudo mdm.

Please advise! Thanks!