After login, blank screen, keyb. not responding, mouse works

[Piraja]

Binary package hint: xorg

I can log on to my own account with no problem (compiz effects are disabled), but logging on to another account, all I get is the default Ubuntu session welcome sound, a few seconds of the usual orange screen, then the background turns black, the mouse cursor chnages into the animated mode (I don't know what to call this, corresponding to "hourglass") and remains movable but the keyboard stops responding (no key combination has any effect and Num Lock or Caps Lock do not "turn on the light", either. The only way to get out of the situation seems to be hard reboot.

I tried removing all the dotfiles and hidden directories from the user account where this problem occurs, to no avail. I removed the whole account (backed up everything first, of course) and created a couple of new users; trying to log on as a new user, the issue is reproduced: blank screen, keyboard unresponsive.

Previously I had to disable compiz, because trying to enable DE effects always resulted in a freeze and need of hard reboot. I can of course uninstall compiz, but since the DE effects worked fine in Hardy (from which I upgraded to Intrepid beta), I thought it might be a good idea to file a bug report.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
Package: xorg 1:7.4~5ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
ProcVersion: Linux version 2.6.27-7-generic (buildd@rothera) (gcc version 4.3.2 (Ubuntu 4.3.2-1ubuntu10) ) #1 SMP Tue Oct 14 18:40:44 UTC 2008

SourcePackage: xorg
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-7-generic i686
xkbcomp:

[Piraja (piraja-deactivatedaccount)]

I removed compiz and compiz-core and tried again. I tried logging on to a newly created account and succeeded. However, there is another problem I did not report in the previous post: When I logged out, I got a black screen, no mouse pointer this time, Ubuntu default logon sound (or was it the session welcome sound again? I have to return to this, since I'm writing this down on my laptop and it's the desktop that has the issues...). Ctrl+Alt+F1 gets me into TTY1 and "ubuntu-desktop login" prompt.

I have encountered this problem several times today, actually each time I logout from the Gnome session (also the main user session which otherwise works normally).

So it seems to me this issue is not only related to Compiz. Please take a look also at another bug report I filed yesterday (it seems related):

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/283056

[Piraja (piraja-deactivatedaccount)]

One more thing I tried out: Logging on to my own main user account, I chose Gnome session from the Options menu at the log-on screen. Then I logged out and even though the screen flickered for a while, I got into the log-on screen (instead of ending up at a black screen, hearing the log-on sound but seeing just black, as I earlier did). Now I tried logging on to a newly created user account, choosing the Gnome session again. This time logging out resulted, again, in a black screen (log-on sound but nothing else), from which I had to "escape" into TTY1 by typing Ctrl+Alt+F1.

[Piraja (piraja-deactivatedaccount)]

The black screen after logout is actually not simply black, but has a sort of minimal flickering "texture" to it (it is indeed still a graphical session going on, from which I have to drop into VT in order to shut down the computer). That is, if you look closely enough.

I hope these descriptions can be of some help. Ubuntu's great, and Intrepid is really promising in spite of the beta bugs, keep up the good work!