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After upgrading from Ubuntu 15.10 to 16.04 via do-release-upgrade I can now only boot into TTY mode. The boot log shows:

[FAILED] Failed to start Simple Desktop Display Manager. See 'systemctl status sddm.service' for details.

Looking following the suggestion for more details I see:

sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2016-05-24 18:35:01 CEST; 4min 58s ago
     Docs: man:sddm(1)
           man:sddm.conf(5)
  Process: 1801 ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c [ "$(cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager 2>/dev/null)" = "/usr/bin/sddm" ] (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

May 24 18:35:00 miked-Ubuntu systemd[1]: sddm.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 24 18:35:01 miked-Ubuntu systemd[1]: sddm.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
May 24 18:35:01 miked-Ubuntu systemd[1]: Stopped Simple Desktop Display Manager.
May 24 18:35:01 miked-Ubuntu systemd[1]: sddm.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
May 24 18:35:01 miked-Ubuntu systemd[1]: Failed to start Simple Desktop Display Manager.

Once I am in TTY I can start the desktop with: sudo service lightdm start and everything appears to be fine.

Any suggestions on how I might resolve this?

Thanks

Update:

I'm running this on a 13" Macbook Pro Retina

1 Answer 1

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Run sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

You will be shown a screen like this:

enter image description here

Select lightdm, press TAB (to select the OK button) and ENTER.

Then run systemctl disable sddm

If you don't plan on ever using sddm again uninstall with sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove sddm

Reboot and you should be presented with the lightdm login screen (unless autologin is enabled, then you will go to Desktop).

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    fantastic!! thank you very much worked like a charm! May 24, 2016 at 17:32
  • Glad to help out!
    – Delorean
    May 24, 2016 at 18:44

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