Bug#496178: debian lenny: after upgrade, gdm failed to start

Sat Aug 23 08:11:41 UTC 2008

Package: gdm
Version: 2.20.7-1
Severity: important

I usually upgrade my machine daily and by hand (I mean, to run "aptitude
update && aptitude safe-upgrade" manually). Yesterday I upgraded my box
and shut it down, everything was smooth.

Today I turned on my box and found gdm refused to present a login
screen.

I can only use "startx -- :1" from console to get X session on :1, so
that I can report this bug. I also search briefly the bug database and
found no duplication of this bug.

I managed to dig out the error message in /var/log/gdm/:0.log. The
relevant lines read as the following:
libhal.c 3476: Error unsubscribing to signals error=Connection is
closed
process 5856: arguments to dbus_connection_get_dispatch_status() were
incorrect, assertion "Connection != NULL" failed in file
dbus_connection.c line 4087
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library

Here is the output of
cat /var/log/dpkg.log | grep upgrade
from 21/08/2008 onwards, which recorded the packages upgraded yesterday and the day before yesterday:

2008-08-21 23:27:52 upgrade ncurses-bin 5.6+20080713-1 5.6+20080804-1
2008-08-21 23:28:00 upgrade libncurses5-dev 5.6+20080713-1
5.6+20080804-1
2008-08-21 23:28:02 upgrade libncurses5 5.6+20080713-1 5.6+20080804-1
2008-08-21 23:28:08 upgrade ncurses-base 5.6+20080713-1 5.6+20080804-1
2008-08-21 23:28:11 upgrade adduser 3.108 3.110
2008-08-21 23:28:12 upgrade libncursesw5 5.6+20080713-1 5.6+20080804-1
2008-08-21 23:28:12 upgrade ncurses-term 5.6+20080713-1 5.6+20080804-1
2008-08-21 23:28:15 upgrade apache2-utils 2.2.9-6 2.2.9-7
2008-08-21 23:28:15 upgrade apache2-mpm-prefork 2.2.9-6 2.2.9-7
2008-08-21 23:28:22 upgrade apache2.2-common 2.2.9-6 2.2.9-7
2008-08-21 23:28:24 upgrade fuse-utils 2.7.3-4 2.7.3-5
2008-08-21 23:28:27 upgrade libfuse2 2.7.3-4 2.7.3-5
2008-08-21 23:28:27 upgrade menu 2.1.39 2.1.40
2008-08-21 23:28:29 upgrade libpam-ldap 184-4 184-4.1
2008-08-22 20:07:55 upgrade autoconf 2.61-7 2.61-8
2008-08-22 20:07:56 upgrade libxml2 2.6.32.dfsg-2 2.6.32.dfsg-2+lenny1
2008-08-22 20:07:57 upgrade libxml2-utils 2.6.32.dfsg-2
2.6.32.dfsg-2+lenny1
2008-08-22 20:07:57 upgrade python-libxml2 2.6.32.dfsg-2
2.6.32.dfsg-2+lenny1

I googled a bit and found similiar d-bus bug for pidgin, bug id #487995.
URL
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg535542.html

Hope this helps. Thanks.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.25-2-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gdm depends on:
ii  adduser             3.110                add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2. 1.5.22               Debian configuration management sy
ii  gksu                2.0.0-5              graphical frontend to su
ii  gnome-session [x-se 2.22.3-1             The GNOME 2 Session Manager
ii  gnome-terminal [x-t 2.22.3-2             The GNOME 2 terminal emulator appl
ii  libart-2.0-2        2.3.20-2             Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0         1.22.0-1             The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libattr1            1:2.4.43-1           Extended attribute shared library
ii  libc6               2.7-13               GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcairo2           1.6.4-6              The Cairo 2D vector graphics libra
ii  libdbus-1-3         1.2.1-3              simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2    0.76-1               simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdmx1             1:1.0.2-3            X11 Distributed Multihead extensio
ii  libfontconfig1      2.6.0-1              generic font configuration library
ii  libfreetype6        2.3.7-1              FreeType 2 font engine, shared lib
ii  libglade2-0         1:2.6.2-1            library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0        2.16.4-2             The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0   2.20.1.1-1           A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgtk2.0-0         2.12.11-3            The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libpam-modules      1.0.1-2              Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam-runtime      1.0.1-2              Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii  libpam0g            1.0.1-2              Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpango1.0-0       1.20.5-1             Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  librsvg2-2          2.22.2-2             SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  librsvg2-common     2.22.2-2             SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii  libselinux1         2.0.65-2             SELinux shared libraries
ii  libwrap0            7.6.q-15             Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  libx11-6            2:1.1.4-2            X11 client-side library
ii  libxau6             1:1.0.3-3            X11 authorisation library
ii  libxdmcp6           1:1.0.2-3            X11 Display Manager Control Protoc
ii  libxext6            2:1.0.4-1            X11 miscellaneous extension librar
ii  libxi6              2:1.1.3-1            X11 Input extension library
ii  libxinerama1        2:1.0.3-2            X11 Xinerama extension library
ii  libxml2             2.6.32.dfsg-2+lenny1 GNOME XML library
ii  lsb-base            3.2-19               Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  metacity [x-window- 1:2.22.0-1           A lightweight GTK2 based Window Ma
ii  xterm [x-terminal-e 235-1                X terminal emulator
ii  zlib1g              1:1.2.3.3.dfsg-12    compression library - runtime

Versions of packages gdm recommends:
ii  gdm-themes                   0.6         Themes for the GNOME Display Manag
ii  whiptail                     0.52.2-11.3 Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
pn  xserver-xephyr | xnest       <none>      (no description available)
ii  xserver-xorg                 1:7.3+15    the X.Org X server
ii  zenity                       2.22.1-1    Display graphical dialog boxes fro

Versions of packages gdm suggests:
ii  libpam-gnome-keyring          2.22.3-1   PAM module to unlock the GNOME key
ii  locales                       2.7-13     GNU C Library: National Language (
pn  uswsusp                       <none>     (no description available)

-- debconf information:
  gdm/daemon_name: /usr/bin/gdm
* shared/default-x-display-manager: gdm