Ubuntu
xorg package

GNOME Desktop hosed up ; cannot log in

Asked by Wesley Michael

Well, I've really done it to myself, and I am hoping someone will be able to help me out.

I am running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (32-bit). I was working on getting MTP working on the machine for use with my Galaxy Nexus phone. I had compiled and installed libmtp-1.1.1, fuse-2.8.6, libid3tag-0.15.1b and mtpfs. Got it working too! And that is where I should have stopped, but I wanted to get gmtp working as well. So, I went on and compiled and installed libffi-3.0.10, glib-2.30.1, libIDL-0.8.14, GConf-3.2.3 and gMTP-1.3.0. The gmtp program worked as well too, but this is where my tail of woe begins. I rebooted the machine.

So, what I've got now isn't the Ubuntu login screen anymore. I see that message "Install Problem! The configuration defaults for the GNOME Power Manager have not been installed." I have searched around and see that the usual cause of that message is running out of space, but at no time did I even come close to running out of space.

I can access the machine via ssh from another computer and that is how I have been attempting to fix the problem. I have access to command line programs only.

I removed all of the programs and libraries that were installed with glib and GConf and followed the suggesstions about removing the power manager and ubuntu desktop and reinstalling them. I restored the /var/lib/gconf directory. I went into the /usr/share/gconf/schemas directory and ran the command: "/usr/sbin/gconf-schemas --register *.schemas". It worked for every file except for the control-center.schemas file where I get this error:

WARNING: Failed to parse default value `[????????? ???????;gnome-appearance-properties.desktop,????????? ???????????? ???????????;gnome-default-applications.desktop,?????????? ??????????;system-config-printer.desktop] ' for schema (/schemas/apps/control-center/cc_actions_list)

That file hasen't been updated in months.

If anyone could please help suggest how to get my system back to its old self that would be most helpful. I REALLY don't want to have to reinstall the OS. I will if that is all I can do, but I want to avoid that at if at all possible.

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Wesley Michael
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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Does it happen the same in Oneiric?

Revision history for this message
Wesley Michael (wam-zoominternet) said : 		#2

Well, I am not sure how I could check that. I only have 10.04 Lucid installed. I can boot into 11.10 from an attached USB drive, but that is booting off that image and not the one I have installed, so it comes up fine.

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Jacobsallan (jacobsallan) said : 		#3

A long shot suggestion from http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=226569

This may be a candidate for the most misleading error message of all time!

You will get this message if gconf-sanity-check-2 tries to write a test file into /tmp and can't read it back. It can be caused if you erase the /tmp directory and allow the system to create a new one automatically. It does so with the permissions set to read and execute only, so the test file cannot be written.

Change the permissions of /tmp to 777 and it will fix it.
    chmod 777 /tmp

?

Revision history for this message
Wesley Michael (wam-zoominternet) said : 		#4

Thanks for the suggestion Jacobsallan. I checked and my /tmp directory had the proper permissions:

drwxrwxrwt 6 root root 4096 2012-01-05 08:55 tmp

One interesting thing, the only thing in /tmp right now is a directory called orbit-gdm. It is filling up with lots of files. Right now it is up to 1557056 and growing all the time. Each file is a socket.

Revision history for this message
Jacobsallan (jacobsallan) said : 		#5

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-980711.html has suggestions. You have read and tried all of them except for
sudo dpkg --configure -a

Revision history for this message
Wesley Michael (wam-zoominternet) said : 		#6

Well, I gave up, fell back and punted. I reloaded 10.04 again and went through the process of configuring my machine the way I like it. Luckly, I could get a list of the packages that I had installed with the 'dpkg --get-selections' command and then I compaired that list with what was installed after I reloaded and had it go though a load the differences one by one. I was also able to make a complete copy of my hard drive onto an externa; USB drive, so I always had something to go back to.

I wonder if the problem might not have been some files that were in /usr/local/share -- I found them when I was restoring. Oh well.

So, I appear to be back up to the point I was at before everything went south. This time I won't try and compile and install the gmtp module.

Thanks everyone for trying to help!