Bug#681087: Re: Bug#681087: An attempt to remove background picture results in a failure to start gdm.

[jaakov jaakov]

> > 2. Restart gdm3 by issuing
> > /etc/init.d/gdm3 restart
> > or by rebooting the machine.
> 
> Were you logged on X11 when doing that? In this case it is a very bad
> idea.
X11 was running, but no users were logged in in gdm. However, rebooting the machine had reproduced the bug.

> Jul 10 15:36:14 localhost gnome-session[3710]: ERROR: Error loading dconf profile 'gdm': open '/var/lib/gdm3/dconf/profile/gdm': Permission denied#012#012aborting...
> 
> ↑ This looks suspicious. Can you list (ls -lR) the contents and
> permissions of /var/lib/gdm3/dconf and all its subdirectories?
Here we go:

# ls -lR /var/lib/gdm3
/var/lib/gdm3:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 4 root       root       4096 Jul 10 15:46 dconf
drwxr-x--- 2 Debian-gdm Debian-gdm 4096 May  4 00:29 Seat1

/var/lib/gdm3/dconf:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jul 10 15:46 db
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 10 15:46 profile

/var/lib/gdm3/dconf/db:
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8899 Jul 10 15:46 gdm
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jul 10 15:46 gdm.d

/var/lib/gdm3/dconf/db/gdm.d:
total 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   41 Jul 10 15:46 00-upstream-settings -> /usr/share/gdm/dconf/00-upstream-settings
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   45 Jul 10 15:46 10-desktop-base-settings -> /usr/share/gdm/dconf/10-desktop-base-settings
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  311 Jul 10 15:46 90-debian-settings
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 10 15:46 locks

/var/lib/gdm3/dconf/db/gdm.d/locks:
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 53 Jul 10 15:46 00-upstream-settings-locks -> /usr/share/gdm/dconf/locks/00-upstream-settings-locks

/var/lib/gdm3/dconf/profile:
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Jul 10 15:46 gdm -> /usr/share/gdm/dconf-profile

/var/lib/gdm3/Seat1:
total 0

Let's take a look at the linked directory from the error message.

# ls -lR /usr/share/gdm/dconf-profile
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9 Jun 25 20:29 /usr/share/gdm/dconf-profile

Best regards
Jaakov.