gdm / X server does not restart after Ctrl + Alt + Backspace

[Marius Gedminas]

I run Dapper. When I press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace in X, sometimes I get a GDM login screen, but about 3 times out of four I just get a blank text console. I then have to log in on /dev/tty1 and run sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart to get GDM back.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug. Do you have anything to /var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages when you run to that?

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

I didn't think to check those. I looked at ~/.xsession-errors and /var/log/gdm/:0.log, but they were untouched since the last successful session.

Last three or four times I tried Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, gdm restarted successfully. Maybe it failed to restart only when a new version of gdm was installed (I'm tracking Dapper) while I was running an older version?

I'll let you know if I manage to reproduce the problem.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

This just happened again: gdm exitted but did not restart after I pressed Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

There was nothing in /var/log/messages and syslog (except for a translated message saying that gconfd exitted because it wasn't used).

Two gdm processes were still running (parent and child). I tried strace on both, briefly -- the child was trying to read from a pipe (fd 7), while the parent was blocked in poll().

/etc/init.d/gdm restart fixed things.

[ischoegl (inch)]

I just installed dapper flight 6 and observed the same behavior (on two different machines). After killing gdm with ctrl+alt+backspace gdm doesn't come up again. I end up at the text console - gdm still appears to be running, but since the man pages for gdm appear to be buggy (there's no such thing as gdm-restart on dapper), I didn't find out about the /etc/init.d/gdm restart yet.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

this is now happening to me and some others in feisty, when it worked perfectly in previous releases.
see this ubuntuforums thread for other people having this problem in feisty when it worked in previous versions:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=384862

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

this has just reappeared on feisty

[junk123 (junk123-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I also have this same problem using Feisty herd 5, fully updated using kernel 2.6.20-12-generic, using the newest version of nvidia-glx.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Fixed upstream now

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

when will come on ubuntu?
with the latests updates I still dont restart gdm

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The change might be used for feisty otherwise next cycle

[Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen (ralf-nieuwenhuijsen)]

Is it related to the DBUS issues people were having when logging out and then back in?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

no, it's not due to dbus, you can read the GNOME bug for details about it

[elwario91 (elwario91)]

When will it be in the repos?
Thx

2007/3/24, Bug Watch Updater <email address hidden>:
>
> ** Changed in: gdm (upstream)
> Status: Unknown => Fix Released
>
> --
> gdm does not restart after Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/34859

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

what about reading the bug comments before adding a question which already got a reply yesterday?

[elwario91 (elwario91)]

Sorry, I'm a bit confused :)

2007/3/24, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden>:
>
> what about reading the bug comments before adding a question which
> already got a reply yesterday?
>
> --
> gdm does not restart after Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/34859
>

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[Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto)]

For the many users which have this problem and have been redirected here, there are two workaround solutions (until the fix is released):

Work-around 1): Log off from Gnome -> In the login screen press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (may not always work)

Work-around 2): Open a console by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1 (all F keys from 1 to 6 are valid) -> login -> type sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart -> give password -> enjoy your restart.....

If by error you end in the "frozen" situation (for instance if accidentally pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) DO NOT shutdwon the system using the power button! You can gracefully shutdown by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del or restart gdm by using the same procedure as in 2) above.

[Philip A. Marshall (philip-philipamarshall)]

I'm having this problem in Feisty Beta... Should this be fixed by now or do I have to wait for Feisty+1?

[Philip A. Marshall (philip-philipamarshall)]

Ack, sorry. I didn't realize that the other comments were so recent. I'll read the dates more carefully next time.

[rasz (citizenr)]

/me thinks feisty will be gnome 2.18, and gnome devs dont want to backport to 2.18 rather hacky bugfix for the hack they introduced earlier to fix buggy pam modules :) so they pushed this hacky hack for hacky hack to 2.19. or rather they deleted the hack that bugfixed pam modules, so now pam modules need fixing :) but restarting gdm works (in 2.19 that is, so not in feisty)

all we can hope is for Ubuntu gnome maintainer to backport this patch. until then its alt-ctrl-f1 and sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start for us :/

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the official way to restart gdm is /etc/init.d/gdm restart, why do you people have to restart xorg this way?

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

On 3/25/07, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> wrote:
> the official way to restart gdm is /etc/init.d/gdm restart, why do you
> people have to restart xorg this way?

I don't know about anyone else, but I encounter this bug when my gnome
session or x server crashes, as sadly does still happen from time to
time, and either exits of its own accord or needs to be killed. Bad
enough that my session crashed; worse that to the non-expert user it
looks like the whole machine broke and needs to be restarted.

--
Martin

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 12:15:53PM -0000, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> the official way to restart gdm is /etc/init.d/gdm restart, why do you
> people have to restart xorg this way?

Two reasons:

  1. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace is faster than opening a terminal, then
     typing sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart, then typing your password.

  2. When I tried to use sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart (because that's
     the official way, and I'm a pedant) I used to be dropped down into
     a text console, and gdm didn't restart:
     https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gdm/+bug/80339
     (rejected as "not really a bug")

Marius Gedminas
--
Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
"No" is the answer.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

why do you consider restarting a service the standard way as being pedant?

[Matthew (mcphil2)]

Because ctrl+space+backspace is supposed to restart X. That's the reason I use it. You restart it the way you want, I'll restart it the way I want. Works for everyone.

[Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen (ralf-nieuwenhuijsen)]

Sebastian, here is a real-life use case:

I sometimes press ctrl+alt+backspace when half-life2:dm on wine crashes. If that crashes, the system gets so slow that going to alt+control+f1 and killing it manually takes longer than doing a hard-reboot.

Perhaps we should just catch the keys in metacity and make it restart gdm cleanly. That might help.

Thirdly, I think you are getting a lot of these comments, because the control+alt+backspace thingie is all over the internet.

I have a couple of friends that won't touch a terminal ever, yet know that control+alt+backspace will rescue their system when the system seems to crash. I was the one to tell them that though. I'm not sure what to tell them now. I'll guess they just have to do a hard-reboort in those cases.

In other words: terminal is not acceptable for all types of users. Control+Alt+Backspace is the control+alt+delete of ubuntu and sometimes needed. In theory it shouldn't be needed because the system never crashes, but in practise, people are going to try stuff like beryl, compiz and wine. Even when their hardware is not capable of it. They use this shortcut at times, yet wouldn't want to touch a terminal.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

This upload fixes the bug:

 gdm (2.18.0-0ubuntu3) feisty; urgency=low
 .
   * debian/patches/90_from_svn_fix_gdm_restart.patch:
     - patch from SVN, fix gdm not always restarting when
       ctrl-alt-backspace is used (Ubuntu: #34859)

[matt felser (mfelser)]

I have updated to the patched version of GDM and it fixes the error, but it introduces a new one.

In testing the patch, I noticed that every other time Gnome is restarted, it will hang. The screen turns black and the cursor appears to be loading, but Gnome does not start. After pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace again, Gnome will load properly.