Bug#742197: dconf-service: After dist-upgrade (testing), Gnome no longer starts (fail whale); gdm greeter log contains critical dconf error

[Tim Van Holder]

Package: dconf-service
Version: 0.18.0-1
Severity: important

After a dist-upgrade and reboot (due to kernel update from 3.9 to 3.13), X
sessions (gnome) no longer work - they get the "fail whale" screen.

For the "normal" Xorg connections, :0.greeter.log has multiple instances of:

  gnome-session[13362]: dconf-CRITICAL: unable to create directory
'/run/user/0/dconf': Permission denied.  dconf will not work properly.

while :0.slave.log has

  gdm-simple-slave[13323]: Failed to give slave programs access to the display.
Trying to proceed.
  gdm-launch-environment][13350]: pam_unix(gdm-launch-environment:session):
session opened for user Debian-gdm by (uid=0)
  gdm-launch-environment][13350]: pam_ck_connector(gdm-launch-
environment:session): nox11 mode, ignoring PAM_TTY :0

So it looks like non-root processes are incorrectly trying to access the run-
dir for root instead of that of user Debian-gdm.

VNC connections (using Xvnc under xinetd) have also stopped working - but their
errors are different.

127.0.0.1:2.slave.log has:

  gdm-launch-environment][14276]: pam_unix(gdm-launch-environment:session):
session opened for user Debian-gdm by (uid=0)
  gdm-launch-environment][14276]: pam_ck_connector(gdm-launch-
environment:session): nox11 mode, ignoring PAM_TTY 127.0.0.1:2
  gdm-launch-environment][14276]: pam_unix(gdm-launch-environment:session):
session closed for user Debian-gdm
  gdm-simple-slave[14268]: GLib-GObject: g_object_ref: assertion
'object->ref_count > 0' failed
  gdm-simple-slave[14268]: GLib-GObject: g_object_unref: assertion
'object->ref_count > 0' failed

and 127.0.0.1:2.greeter.log has:

  gnome-session-is-accelerated: No composite extension.
  gnome-session-check-accelerated: Helper exited with code 256
  gnome-session-is-accelerated: No composite extension.
  gnome-session-check-accelerated: Helper exited with code 256
  ** (process:14284): WARNING **: software acceleration check failed: Child
process exited with code 1
  (gnome-session-failed:14304): Gdk-WARNING **: gnome-session-failed: Fatal IO
error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server 127.0.0.1:2.
  (gnome-session:14284): Gdk-WARNING **: gnome-session: Fatal IO error 11
(Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server 127.0.0.1:2.

I wasn't sure where to put this (dconf, gnome-session, gdm3, ...); given that
one of the failure modes has only dconf errors, I opted for dconf.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.13-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages dconf-service depends on:
ii  libc6         2.18-4
ii  libdconf1     0.18.0-1
ii  libglib2.0-0  2.38.2-5

Versions of packages dconf-service recommends:
ii  dconf-gsettings-backend  0.18.0-1

dconf-service suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information