after upgrade, "Cinnamon just crashed." Fallback Mode

[J42]

I recently tried to upgrade Mint Petra to the latest version, and now I get an error evertime I try to login: "Cinnamon just crashed. You are running in Fallback mode. Do you want to restart Cinnamon?" I click 'yes' here, but i just get the error message again.

I already tried several things from similar threads:

I upgraded to the nightly version of cinnamon. Now I get me wallpaper instead of a black background, but the same error message.

I tried restarting after deleting:
~/.local/share/cinnamon
~/.cinnamon

Any suggestions of where I should go from here? Thanks.

[austin.texas]

How did you do the upgrade?

[J42]

I followed the instructions in this article, except I tried to upgrade to rafaela instead of qiana.

http://www.tecmint.com/upgrade-linux-mi ... x-mint-17/

So the I did:

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sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list  /etc/apt/sources.list.bak
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list  /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list.bak

sudo sed -i 's/saucy/trusty/' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed -i 's/petra/rafaela/' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo sed -i 's/saucy/trusty/' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
sudo sed -i 's/petra/rafaela/' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get upgrade

I followed the onscreen onscreen prompts and then restarted to find the error. Now I understand that I probably can't upgrade to rafaela this way, but is there someway to get a working desktop so I can do a backup, etc? Thanks for any help.

[austin.texas]

That's great! I am glad you got it working.
Mate is a fine Desktop. You will have caja instead of nemo, and pluma instead of gedit.

Another thing that I did not mention previously- a faulty theme can cause Cinnamon to crash. I know this from my experiments in writing my own theme.
If you were using a special theme in Petra, it could be incompatible with the latest Cinnamon version.

is there someway to get a working desktop so I can do a backup, etc?

If that question means that you do not have a live Mint DVD or USB, you might want to make one.
For rescue purposes, it is good to have the Knoppix live DVD. It is a huge download, and contains almost any tool anyone could need. It runs on almost any computer, too - even ancient ones.
The one tool I have always said that everyone should have on hand is the Rescatux/Supergrub2 CD. It does some amazing stuff - such as booting a Mint .iso on your hard drive, or booting any operating system on your hard drive (when your Grub is messed up).

Please go to your first post, click EDIT, and add [SOLVED] to the title.

[J42]

Thanks austin.texas. Here's the output of inxi -r

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Repos:     Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list
           deb http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/op/stable/debian/ lsb3.2 main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/blinxwang-mpv-builds-saucy.list
           deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/blinxwang/mpv-builds/ubuntu trusty main
           deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/blinxwang/mpv-builds/ubuntu trusty main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ehoover-compholio-saucy.list
           deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ehoover/compholio/ubuntu trusty main
           deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ehoover/compholio/ubuntu trusty main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gwendal-lebihan-dev-cinnamon-nightly-saucy.list
           deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-nightly/ubuntu saucy main
           deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-nightly/ubuntu saucy main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
           deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ rafaela main upstream import
           deb http://extra.linuxmint.com rafaela main
           deb http://www.lug.bu.edu/mirror/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted universe multiverse
           deb http://www.lug.bu.edu/mirror/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
           deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security main restricted universe multiverse
           deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ trusty partner
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/steam.list
           deb [arch=amd64,i386] http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/ precise steam
           deb-src [arch=amd64,i386] http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/ precise steam

It is a Lenovo T-420s laptop with Intel HD Graphics 3000 for graphics:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd015743

The fallback desktop is a working desktop. It is just not Cinnamon.

The desktop I'm getting is just my wallpaper and the cursor. I can't seem to do anything with it, or launch any programs from the terminals here. How is the fallback desktop supposed to work?

[austin.texas]

How is the fallback desktop supposed to work?

When I have gotten the fallback desktop it is gnome, with menu and Panel, etc.
Sorry, gotta go. It is past my bedtime...

[J42]

I did some research and others with older graphics processors have this issue with newer versions of cinnnamon, so I ran:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install mint-meta-mate

And then selected Mate as the desktop before logging in, and it works. If I decide I don't like Mate, I'll just do a fresh install later. Thanks

[austin.texas]

That's great! I am glad you got it working.
Mate is a fine Desktop. You will have caja instead of nemo, and pluma instead of gedit.

Another thing that I did not mention previously- a faulty theme can cause Cinnamon to crash. I know this from my experiments in writing my own theme.
If you were using a special theme in Petra, it could be incompatible with the latest Cinnamon version.

is there someway to get a working desktop so I can do a backup, etc?

If that question means that you do not have a live Mint DVD or USB, you might want to make one.
For rescue purposes, it is good to have the Knoppix live DVD. It is a huge download, and contains almost any tool anyone could need. It runs on almost any computer, too - even ancient ones.
The one tool I have always said that everyone should have on hand is the Rescatux/Supergrub2 CD. It does some amazing stuff - such as booting a Mint .iso on your hard drive, or booting any operating system on your hard drive (when your Grub is messed up).

Please go to your first post, click EDIT, and add [SOLVED] to the title.

[Shinespark]

Hi, I'm having the same issue as TC. I didn't do any upgrades like he did though. Yesterday I installed libxml2 http://www.xmlsoft.org/, I did nothing else.
Today when I turned on my computer, Cinnamon pops up a window telling me that it crashed and asking if I want to restart it. I said yes 3 times and only on the third time, Cinnamon finally started.

However, gedit isn't working, and my update manager isn't starting. My desktop shows the background I had yesterday before all this started, but the folders and things I had on my desktop are not visible. I can see them if I navigate to my desktop using my file browser. I don't know if I broke something when I installed libxml yesterday.

Please help.

[austin.texas]

@ Shinespark
It is best to start a new thread with your question.

[Shinespark]

Thank you. I will.