Nothing appear after login

[tinatse]

I am also having this problem.
It is in a public college computer lab with 26 boxes.

I am running Hardy 8.10

I can reproduce this problem by simply by trying to login.
If it fails I do the following and often it lets the user in

The rm -rf may seem redundant but for repeat runs it is needed...
mkdir dot.dot >/tmp/$$ 2>&1

mv .config dot.dot ; rm -rf .config >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .esd_auth dot.dot ; rm -rf .esd_auth >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gstreamer* dot.dot ; rm -rf .gstreamer* >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gvfs dot.dot ; rm -rf .gvfs >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .recent* dot.dot ; rm -rf .recemt* >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
## ############## #######
mv .ICEauthority dot.dot ; rm -rf .ICEauthority >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .Xauthority dot.dot ; rm -rf .Xauthority >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .dmrc dot.dot ; rm -rf .dmrc >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gconf dot.dot ; rm -rf .gconf >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gconfd dot.dot ; rm -rf .gconfd >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gnome2 dot.dot ; rm -rf .gnome2 >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gnome dot.dot ; rm -rf .gnome >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gnome2_private dot.dot ; rm -rf .gnome2_private >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gnupg dot.dot ; rm -rf .gnupg >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .gtk-bookmarks dot.dot ; rm -rf .gtk-bookmarks >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .nautilus dot.dot ; rm -rf .nautilus >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .pulse dot.dot ; rm -rf .pulse >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
mv .xsession-errors dot.dot ; rm -rf .xsession-errors >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1
############## #######
mv .metacity dot.dot >>/tmp/$$ 2>&1

mkdir .metacity
mkdir .metacity/sessions
touch .metacity/sessions/default0.ms
touch .metacity/sessions/default.ms

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?
 * What desktop environment do you use? Could you look what is running when getting the issue? Could you add your .xsession-errors to the bug?

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[tinatse (tinatsee)]

It is reproducible.
just login as usually.
I was using ubuntu 8.04LTS.

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden>wrote:

> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu
> better. Please answer these questions:
>
> * Is this reproducible?
> * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?
> * What desktop environment do you use? Could you look what is running when
> getting the issue? Could you add your .xsession-errors to the bug?
>
> This will help us to find and resolve the problem.
>
> ** Changed in: gdm (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Low
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> Nothing appear after login
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/316131
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in "gdm" source package in Ubuntu: Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> I'm using ubuntu 8.04 LTS version. Sometimes after I login, nothing appears
> on the screen except the background image. No desktop icon, no Panels. After
> restart, it becomes ok.
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you still get the issue?

[DFOXpro (dfoxpro)]

Spanish:

Si es reproducible con cualquier release.

1º Usa una distinta para /home
2º En windows u otro SO monta esa particion con permisos de escritura por medio de aplicaciones como Ext2Fsd (http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/)
3º reinicia

Ahora saldra el error que mas de una vez se ha documentado:
http://www.ubuntu-es.org/index.php?q=node/112291
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=21319

[DFOXpro (dfoxpro)]

* 1º Usa una PARTICION distinta para /home

[Monika Eggers (monikakrug)]

Translation:

It is reproducible with any release.

1) Use a separate partition for /home.
2) Boot Windows or another operating system. Mount the partition with writing permissions, e.g. with Ext2Fsd.
3) Reboot to Ubuntu.

Now one gets the error that has been documented more than once:
http://www.ubuntu-es.org/index.php?q=node/112291
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=21319

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

to be confirmed by somebody having the issue

[vsekulic (vlad-sekulic)]

I'm having this same issue with lab computers I'm administering. In both cases (so far), the commonalities are:

- the systems run 9.04
- the home directory for the user is mounted via CIFS (samba) from a fileserver

Notably, there are around 5 or so 9.04 systems in the lab -- which do not mount the home directory via CIFS -- that do not exhibit this problem. Only the CIFS-mounting systems.

My "breakthrough" in troubleshooting this was to run an strace(1) on the fileserver against the user's smbd process. Upon login, the following looped interminably:

"
read(23, "\0\0\0\252"..., 4) = 4
read(23, "\377SMB2\0\0\0\0\0\1\300\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\1\0\1ld\0\271A\17"..., 170) = 170
stat(".pulse/7692ed27d65b84c17c3cdda449bebb23:runtime", 0x7fffffc94f00) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
lstat(".pulse/7692ed27d65b84c17c3cdda449bebb23:runtime", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=23, ...}) = 0
fcntl(11, F_SETLKW, {type=F_RDLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=17872, len=1}) = 0
fcntl(11, F_SETLKW, {type=F_UNLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=17872, len=1}) = 0
readlink(".pulse/7692ed27d65b84c17c3cdda449bebb23:runtime", "/tmp/pulse-6yCwltbxKn5h"..., 4096) = 23
write(23, "\0\0\0l\377SMB2\0\0\0\0\200\1\300\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\1\0\1ld"..., 112) = 112
select(24, [19 23], [], NULL, {57, 81589}) = 1 (in [23], left {57, 72000})
"

Note the critical line showing that file .pulse/7692...blahblah...bebb23:runtime cannot be found. Looking at this file on disk, it turns out to be a symlink to a file such as /tmp/pulse-6yCwltbxKn5h, the latter which doesn't exist, thus creating a broken symlink situation. So it seems that Pulse gets hung up on this and stalls the entire login process.

The workaround for me was to remove the symlink, which would then force a new /tmp/pulse-XXX file to be created with a proper symlink in the user's home directory, and the login would proceed successfully!

I've confirmed that this workaround works on both affected systems.

I'm not sure what the underlying _cause_ is, however, and am worried whether this will pop up in the future or not, thus any help is appreciated.

[vsekulic (vlad-sekulic)]

Just as a quick addition, both affected machines are running GNOME, and prior to discovering the .pulse/ broken symlink, my previous workaround was to boot the machines in GNOME's fail-safe mode, which seemed to work. But now, a regular "full" login works with the new workaround.