Bug#598377: unable to log into gdm3 - only user name visible

[Paulo Sequeira]

I seem to have stumped with this same problem: after I provide the
password for my username, all I see is the background image and the
desktop environment is not fully loaded (no destkop icons, no panels);
keyboard shortcuts do work, though.

Using a keyboard shortcut, I could start an xterm and then called the
gnome-session command, which caused the desktop icons to appear, but
not the panels. I could see, however, some error messages from
gnome-session related to the window manager and the panels.

So, I restarted into a recovery mode prompt and executed

# apt-get purge gdm3 metacity

then rebooted to a normal session (to gain access to the network), and
reinstalled gdm3 and metacity with

$ sudo apt-get install gdm3 metacity

I noticed that caused several dependencies to be downloaded and
installed. This was strange, because the purge I just executed only
removed the gdm3 and metacity packages.

Anyway, I rebooted after installation finished and this time I got the
desktop session to work again.

$ dpkg --list gdm3
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii  gdm3           2.30.5-10      Next generation GNOME Display Manager