I am running Ubuntu 13.10 in my PC. Two days ago, oneconf crashed while I was working and I had to restart the computer. Since then, I haven't been able to go past the black screen to the login screen, after booting.
I used the CLI console tty1 (Ctrl+Alt+F1) to check syslog, Xorg.0.log, dmesg, etc. I got the following message repeated over and over in syslog:
Apr 9 00:40:11 atul gnome-session[16679]: WARNING: IceLockAuthFile failed: Permission denied
Apr 9 00:40:11 atul gdm-simple-slave[16479]: GLib-GObject: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed
Apr 9 00:40:11 atul gdm-simple-slave[16479]: GLib-GObject: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed
Apr 9 00:40:12 atul acpid: client 16484[0:0] has disconnected
Apr 9 00:40:12 atul acpid: client 16484[0:0] has disconnected
Apr 9 00:40:12 atul acpid: client connected from 16752[0:0]
Apr 9 00:40:12 atul acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Apr 9 00:40:12 atul acpid: client connected from 16752[0:0]
Apr 9 00:40:12 atul acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Apr 9 00:40:12 atul gdm-simple-slave[16747]: Failed to give slave programs access to the display. Trying to proceed.
Moreover, my (Ctrl-Alt-F1) session keeps getting interrupted by the main GUI (Ctrl-Alt-F7). It looks like the X/gdm keeps restarting in an infinite loop.
I wasn't able to find any direct solution on the web. But I tried some solutions given for similar problems. I tried reconfiguring gdm, xserver-xorg. I tried reinstalling xserver-xorg, gdm, gnome-shell, gnome-session, etc. I tried removing ubuntu-gnome-desktop entirely and use unity instead. None of them worked. When I tried using lightdm instead of gdm, I got "System running in low graphics mode" error. When I tried recovery mode with failsafe GUI, my failsafeX did not start.
When I tried startx in my CUI (Ctrl-Alt-F1), I get a GUI at Ctrl-Alt-F78. But I still get interrupted by (Ctrl-Alt-F7) when gdm restarts. When I stop gdm service, my applications start crashing in my GUI.
Any suggestions?
do-release-upgrade -d
just to get rid of it and it seems to work. Not really a solution thought. In the past I used to manually reinstall the proprietary NVidia driver and it always helped, just lost my nerve this time.