blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

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antubis

blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by antubis »

hi,

i've installed gnome-shell and gnome-session via terminal on a fresh installed mint 17 cinnamon. when i try to log into the gnome desktop, i only get a blank screen (with mouse cursor) - no gnome is loading.
the same issue appears if i install cinnamon and mdm via ppa in a ubuntu trusty installation. in this case gnome-shell and also unity are not starting with mdm.

using gdm, gnome is starting without problems. however, i'd like to use mdm because of the bug in gdm (as well as in lightdm) that crops the list of available window managers without showing a scroll bar.

thanks for any help
antubis
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
yasharne

Re: blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by yasharne »

i have same problem but i couldn`t find any solution, need help
astaria

Re: blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by astaria »

I have exactly the same problem. Does anyone have a solution?
djahma

Re: blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by djahma »

Here is a potential solution: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-9 ... art-0.html
Annoyingly for me, I don't have that xorg.conf file where composition would be disabled. Hope this works for you.
astaria

Re: blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by astaria »

Thanks djahma! I will try your fix :) Edit: Hmm... I don't have a xorg.config file either... It seems...
astaria

Re: blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by astaria »

I found I missed one important step in the installation of the gnome desktop - installing gdm. That fixed it for me.
$ sudo apt-get gdm
It will then uninstall mdm and it will load from gdm (a kind of system login that is more compatible with gnome). As the person who began this thread notes, it doesn't seem to work with mdm...However, I have found the system compatibility with linux mint so far isn't that great. I got gnome to crash twice (both times I used it so far), both while using libre office...
Edit:Gnome stopped crashing when I edited icons and windows under the Tweak Tool (subsection "Appearance") so they were no longer Mint-X, but defaults.
djahma

Re: blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by djahma »

astaria wrote:I found I missed one important step in the installation of the gnome desktop - installing gdm. That fixed it for me.
$ sudo apt-get gdm
It will then uninstall mdm and it will load from gdm (a kind of system login that is more compatible with gnome).
I had tried with lightdm and had a similar result: black screen with a mouse cursor only.
Trying gdm this time, I don't even get to the login screen :cry: Any idea how to troubleshoot gdm? I believe I've messed up my gnome packages somewhere along the path of customizing my original xfce install and then trying to install gnome3 through PPAs...
Let me know what file content you'd like to see. I'm still eager to trying gnome-shell again :)
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clem
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Re: blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by clem »

It's a regression introduced in upstart by a Unity fix https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1224217

This might help:

- Edit /usr/share/upstart/sessions/gnome-session.conf
- Comment out the line starting with "stop on starting ..."
- Comment out the line starting with "instance .."
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clem
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Re: blank screen launching gnome-shell with MDM

Post by clem »

Note to GNOME users: I don't mean to tell people to leave or anything, but I have to be honest and advise people the best I can. Ubuntu is the worst possible base for GNOME. A lot of modifications are made to GNOME and to upstart to make Unity work and these modifications often only take LightDM into consideration. Switching to LMDE and its debian base significantly improves the quality of GNOME. And if GNOME is your main desktop, I'd even go as far as suggesting Fedora.
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