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

[Paulo Sequeira]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 12:26 AM, Josselin Mouette <joss at debian.org> wrote:
> Le lundi 25 avril 2011 à 23:29 -0600, Paulo Sequeira a écrit :
>> 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.
>
> For the record, this has most certainly nothing to do with gdm3. This is
> your session not starting correctly.

I agree with you that this is not a bug in gdm3's code, but perhaps in
the packaging somewhere?

Consider the following:

1) I had gdm3 installed. I also ensured to apt-get update & apt-get
upgrade & apt-get dist-upgrade until no more packages had to be
installed.

2) As the problem was not fixed by merely upgrading, I removed the
gdm3 & metacity packages, and only these packages.

3) When I immediately reinstalled the gdm3 package, the system
suddently realized there there were missing dependencies that needed
to be installed (I recall seing gnome-panel among them), so it
downloaded and installed them and this is what fixed the problem.

Now, I realize I'm providing very limited concrete information that
could be of any help to properly reconstruct the scenario, reproduce
the issue, understand it and fix it, but the problem is fixed for me
now, and I don't know if there's a way to get a log of the exact
apt-get & dpkg actions performed, so we can have a picture of the
system state that was suffering the problem. If anyone can provide me
some advice on how to do that, it should be easy for me to get and
provide the required details.

Cheers,

-- 
Paulo