After upgrade to mythbuntu 8.10 system hangs at "Performing Autostart" or "Starting the Desktop Manager" (xfce4-session problem)

[pieterb]

I upgraded my system from Mythbuntu 8.04 to Mythbuntu 8.10. The upgrade process went ok, but unfortuately the system is not starting properly.

When the system auto-logs in as the mythtv user, the desktop manager will not start. It will hang either at "Performing Autostart" or at "Starting the desktop manager".

Thanks to lago and raporjr at the Mythbuntu IRC-channel, I applied a workarround.
- kill X session
- start Failsafe GNOME session
- move ~/.config/xfce4-session to ~/.config/xfce4-session.borked
- restart a normal Mythtv session

See http://mythbuntu.pastebin.com/f5db9139d for my ubuntu/mythtv logs.

[pieterb (pieterb-gewis)]

according to superm1 this is related to the splash screen. I attached my xfce4-session.borked directory.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

this attachement appears to be empty. Can you redo it?
This bug is most certainly the same bug as before with the broken splash screen.

[meshe (michelle-agnew)]

This happened to me as well, for the previous 10 or so restarts it would lock up, renaming the xfce-session folder fixed the issue, my old one is attached.

[meshe (michelle-agnew)]

Sorry, one other note that relates to this, my system wasn't an upgrade to 8.10 it is a fresh install.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

This was fixed with the latest mythbuntu-default-settings, by dropping the balou theme:

mythbuntu-default-settings (0.83-0ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * Now that we have converted to xsplash, drop unused XFCE balou based
    splash theme.
  * Drop default black background, and instead set default to the same
    one used for xsplash.
  * Set default background to Auto rather than Scale.
  * Set default icon theme to Humanity.
  * Any file types that were set to open in totem now open in VLC.
  * Drop depends on gtk2-engines-mythbuntu. It doesn't look very good,
    and needs some major work if it will be default going forward.
  * Depends on gnome-themes-ubuntu.
  * Set default window manager theme to Dust. If we get some custom work
    at some point to come up with a better (and maintained) Mythbuntu theme,
    we can restore the old one.
  * Set default cursor theme to DMZ-Black since Human isn't installed.

 -- Mario Limonciello <email address hidden> Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:21:24 -0500