o_O I don't know enough about how X interacts with the hardware, but not being able to open the frame buffer doesn't sound good... Take a look at this.

---

From: wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org <wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org> on behalf of Richard Klein <rich@richardklein.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2018 7:14:35 PM
To: Worcester Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Wlug] Kali Linux/GDM3 display manager

 

Creating a new user didn't clear anything up.  I was able to log into the GUI session with the new user, but, again, there was nothing there but a solid background and the mouse cursor.

I didn't find .xsession-errors or .gconf in my home directories (for my existing account nor for the new account), but I did find $home/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.1.log.  There were a couple warnings for fonts it couldn't find and drivers it couldn't use, but in all cases it was able to fall back to something else.  There was one error:

(EE) open /dev/fb0: permission denied

That was it.

-- 

Rich

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 8:45 AM, Bradley Noyes <bkn@ithryn.net> wrote:

Richard,

I’d bet that your packages are fine (but i’m not a betting man). It sounds too me like there is something awry w/ your X environment. Perhaps the upgraded packages don’t recognize a config buried somewhere. Here’s a couple things i would try.

 - Often times there a file in your home directory called .xsession-errors. I’d see if that file exists, and it may offer you some hints as to why your window manager is not starting. I recall launching X from a Graphical Login Window to be finicky in linux and error output is difficult to understand. the .xsession-errors file is where i’d look first.

 - Other idea is to create a new user, then login to the GUI with that user to make sure the GUI starts from a fresh environment.

 - The last idea i have. It sounds like you’re running gnome from the fact that your using GDM3,  I believe the gnome environment files are in .gconf in your home directory. try renaming your .gconf to something like .gconf.backup. You may also want to try the same for .local, although many other applications beyond gnome apps use .local for environment settings.


 - b


> On Mar 18, 2018, at 11:13, Richard Klein <rich@richardklein.org> wrote:
>
> I'm running Kali, which is based on Debian.  Recently, after some updates, the computer would only boot to a text prompt; no GUI.  I found that, somehow, I had a more recent version of a Gstreamer-plugins library than GDM3 could run on.  I removed the library, then re-installed GDM3, letting it choose whatever libraries it depended on.  That worked, to a point.  It boots to the GUI now, and gives me a login prompt.  I enter my username and password successfully, but then I get a solid-color background, a mouse cursor, and nothing else; no icons, no status bars, no menus, no apparent response to mouse clicks.
>
> My guess is I still need to re-install something else that runs on top of the display manager, but I don't know what.  Any ideas?

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