Upgrade 16.10 problem: only background and pointer after login

[Pierre Blanche]

Definition:

After upgrading from 16.04 to 16.10, the Ubuntu login show the background and the pointer. No Dash, no Launcher, no access to keyboard, cannot summon the terminal (ctrl+alt+t or ctrl+F2). If I select the Unity8 session same thing. If I select the GNOME, it works fine after turning the screen black for a second.

Diagnostic:

Same problem was described by people upgrading to 16.04

https://askubuntu.com/questions/449845/problems-after-upgrading-to-14-04-only-background-and-pointer-after-login/481620#481620

and

https://askubuntu.com/questions/17381/unity-doesnt-load-no-launcher-no-dash-appears

But all the solutions given does not works for me (mainly --reinstall ubuntu-desktop). This seems to be related to a nvidia graphic card and driver problem that I am indeed running (nvs5100M, driver 340.98).

Getting worst before getting better:

I try to change the display manager from lightdm to gdm3:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

Bad decision: I had a black screen instead of the login. ctrl+F1 gave me an error message:

    "A start job is running for Hold until boot process finishes up"

I followed the instruction from this link:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/760825/cannot-boot-system-due-to-start-job-running-for-hold

After restart, the Ubuntu session is now working fine. I have no clue why, but you guys better figure that out because it is horrible and I lost 6 hours today trying to fix this $hit!

Seriously, that might help other people.

[林博仁(Buo-ren, Lin) (buo-ren-lin)]

Seems to be a duplicate of Bug #1569357 ?