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I'm running (well, at least I WAS running) Ubuntu 11.04 and slowly converting to Ubuntu Studio. I had most of the components running except for the audio portion. The system ran fine and booted normally. I loaded up the audio components to make jackd work - stopping before I got a chance to load the low-latency kernel - and had to reboot to Windows for a second. Upon returning to Ubuntu, I now get the Ubuntu Studio splash screen, the system gives me a cheery "ding", and then nothing - no login dialog to get me into the desktop.

I can ALT-F2 to get into a terminal. Gdm's processes appear to be running mostly. However, the last line in syslog contains a gdm error: WARNING: Unable to find users: no seat-id found.

Stopping and then restarting gdm has no effect. I have walked backward through the audio installation process removing the packages that were installed, also with no effect. I have been googling this for a few days. I would be ever so grateful if someone could at least point me in the right direction before I have to whip out the install disk yet again.

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Hm, something appears to be breaking your gdm configuration. Maybe look in /var/log/dpkg.log for any packages that may be releated to multi-seat support and remove them? Cautiously. Or, if you've access to a working system, compare everything under /etc/gdm with a working config. – Marius Gedminas Jun 13 '11 at 21:14
@Marius: Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I have been unable to convince the rest of the family that Ubuntu is better than Windows (hard-pressed to believe that myself atm), so this is the only linux box in the house. – Keith LeBrun Jun 13 '11 at 22:55
I've gone over all the packages I've added in the last few days and haven't found anything that should have impacted the login prompt except for a Unity upgrade. As much as I want to point fingers at that piece of... work, it shouldn't have had an impact on my ability to access the desktop. – Keith LeBrun Jun 13 '11 at 22:58
Isn't there a way to set the system to something looking like a fresh install (without doing a fresh install, that is)? – Keith LeBrun Jun 13 '11 at 23:00
This question should instead be filed as a bug report, thanks! Instructions here. – Jorge Castro Feb 4 '12 at 20:12

closed as off topic by Marco Ceppi♦ Feb 4 '12 at 21:06

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