After upgrade from 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS, display manager fails apparently because of freedesktop

Question

I recently took the hint and upgraded from 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS, but had a nasty surprise when no login screen appeared, and even ctrl-alt F2 and friends didn't work. Fortunately, I was able to ssh in from elsewhere.

Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-33-generic x86_64)

Looking at syslog, I saw that gdm3/wayland tried repeatedly to start org.freedesktop.systemd1 and it would immediately fail (exit 1). A message like this would be repeated over and over in syslog.

Aug 30 09:13:38 pabst /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-wayland-session[1442]: dbus-daemon[1444]: [session uid=127 pid=1444] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.systemd1' requested by ':1.0' (uid=127 pid=1442 comm="/usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-wayland-session gnome-session --" label="unconfined")
Aug 30 09:13:38 pabst /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-wayland-session[1442]: dbus-daemon[1444]: [session uid=127 pid=1444] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1' failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Aug 30 09:13:38 pabst /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-wayland-session[1442]: Unable to register display with display manager
Aug 30 09:13:38 pabst gdm3: Child process -1442 was already dead.
Aug 30 09:13:38 pabst gdm3: Child process 1439 was already dead.
Aug 30 09:13:38 pabst gdm3: Unable to kill session worker process

Seeing advice elsewhere, I tried using "ubuntu-drivers autoinstall" which installed the recommended nvidia-driver-390. That didn't help.

I also tried disabling Wayland in a configuration file, but also no good.

I purged the Nvidia driver and tried with nouveau. Still no dice.

Then I installed nvidia-340 which at least sets the screen resolution correctly (as seen using "xinit" which brings up an xterm without a display manager).

Then I installed xdm, and made "xdm" the default greeter (it was part of the configuration when xdm was installed).

Now a login screen appears (and ctrl-alt F2 and friends work) but if I try to log on, it waits a bit after the login and then bumps back to the login screen.

.xsession-errors shows no serious problems.

But syslog shows that gnome-session-binary is trying to start org.freedesktop.systemd1 which (of course) fails again, which makes the required Gnome Shell.desktop die which causes the whole shebang fail (after lots of futile tries).

The sad ending to the story:

Aug 30 11:40:12 pabst dbus-daemon[3966]: [session uid=820 pid=3964] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1' failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Aug 30 11:40:12 pabst gnome-keyring-secrets.desktop[4042]: GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL=/home/john/.cache/keyring-DFQHOZ
Aug 30 11:40:12 pabst gnome-keyring-secrets.desktop[4042]: SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/home/john/.cache/keyring-DFQHOZ/ssh
Aug 30 11:40:12 pabst org.gnome.Shell.desktop[4057]: Window manager warning: Unsupported session type
Aug 30 11:40:12 pabst gnome-session[3926]: gnome-session-binary[3926]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Aug 30 11:40:12 pabst gnome-session-binary[3926]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Aug 30 11:40:13 pabst org.gnome.Shell.desktop[4060]: Window manager warning: Unsupported session type
Aug 30 11:40:13 pabst gnome-session[3926]: gnome-session-binary[3926]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Aug 30 11:40:13 pabst gnome-session[3926]: gnome-session-binary[3926]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
Aug 30 11:40:13 pabst gnome-session[3926]: gnome-session-binary[3926]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....
Aug 30 11:40:13 pabst gnome-session-binary[3926]: Unrecoverable failure in required component org.gnome.Shell.desktop
Aug 30 11:40:13 pabst gnome-session-binary[3926]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Aug 30 11:40:13 pabst gnome-session-binary[3926]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
Aug 30 11:40:13 pabst gnome-session-binary[3926]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....

So: (1) Can org.freedesktop.systemd1 be fixed? Is there any way to see why it's failing? or if it's unfixable (2) Is there a way to have gnome use something other than org.freedesktop.systemd1 ? or (3) Is there a display manager I can use on Ubuntu bionic that doesn't use any gnome stuff?

Answer 1

I think you need to select Xorg from Xwayland, see this bug

Edit your /etc/gdm3/custom.conf file and add :

WaylandEnable=false

another user issue had fixed after install haveged, may you can try :

sudo apt install haveged

and also you need make sure had plymouth package.

sudo apt install plymouth

and also you might make sure your kernel fixed, see this bug

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I had a similar issue. This error in syslog finally lead me to my solution:

(EE) systemd-logind: failed to get session: PID 10023 does not belong to any known session

As a result of that error, gdm-x-session fails further along in the gdm3 start up process and aborts:

/usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-x-session[2849]: dbus-daemon[3479]: [session uid=136 pid=3479] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.systemd1' requested by ':1.0' (uid=136 pid=2849 comm="/usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-x-session gnome-session --autost" label="unconfined")
/usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-x-session[2849]: dbus-daemon[3479]: [session uid=136 pid=3479] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1' failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
gdm-x-session: could not fetch environment: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
gdm3: GdmManager: trying to register new display
gdm3: GdmManager: Error while retrieving session id for sender: Error getting session id from systemd: No data available
gdm-x-session: Could not register display: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: No display available

The gdm3 service just keeps trying to start gdm-x-session over and over again, flooding syslog. I fixed it by adding this line to /etc/pam.d/gdm-launch-environment:

session optional        pam_systemd.so

My theory on the real problem is that pam-auth-update is run during some package installs and it would have added pam_systemd to /etc/pam.d/common-session. However, I had done manual edits to at least one /etc/pam.d/common-* file, in which case pam-auth-update aborts if "--force" is not specified.

Answer 3

I had similar issues where the upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 resulted in blank screen.

The key to finding the problems was reviewing the errors in the file /var/log/syslog

gnome-session[2851]: X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
gnome-session[2851]:   Major opcode of failed request:  154 (GLX)
gnome-session[2851]:   Minor opcode of failed request:  3 (X_GLXCreateContext)
gnome-session[2851]:   Value in failed request:  0x0
gnome-session[2851]:   Serial number of failed request:  19
gnome-session[2851]:   Current serial number in output stream:  20
gnome-session[2851]: gnome-session-check-accelerated: GL Helper exited with code 256
gnome-session-c[2979]: Couldn't connect to accessibility bus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-4UdC671MtT: Connection refused
gnome-session-c[2979]: eglGetDisplay() failed
gnome-session[2851]: gnome-session-check-accelerated: GLES Helper exited with code 256
gnome-session-c[2980]: Couldn't connect to accessibility bus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-4UdC671MtT: Connection refused
gnome-session[2851]: X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
gnome-session[2851]:   Major opcode of failed request:  154 (GLX)
gnome-session[2851]:   Minor opcode of failed request:  3 (X_GLXCreateContext)
gnome-session[2851]:   Value in failed request:  0x0
gnome-session[2851]:   Serial number of failed request:  19
gnome-session[2851]:   Current serial number in output stream:  20
gnome-session[2851]: gnome-session-check-accelerated: GL Helper exited with code 256

The solution was found in the outline in the link below, to remove the nvidia drivers.

I was surprised this was the solution as my system ran on intel integrated gpu. However its hard to know how things precipitate till they do.

https://www.osso.nl/blog/ubuntu-bionic-crashing-gdm-eglgetdisplay/

First I changed the display manager to lightdm.

$ sudo apt-get install lightdm
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

to select lightdm as the default desktop manager

Then the login screen came up. However , I entered the famous ubuntu login loop , where upon successful login to the system resulted into the same greeter screen again instead of navigating into the desktop.

$ dpkg -l | grep nvidia 
$ sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-***

Voila, the system starts again as before.

I also had issues with the gnome themes, which cause the menus and window title bars to disappear. I had to install the gnome "tweaks" program to select the right theme and things were back.