Bug#747292: gdm3: Unable to login after last upgrade (version 3.8.4-7): fails to start a GNOME session

[Laurent Bigonville]

Le Mon, 12 May 2014 12:02:12 +0200,
Benjamin Menant <benjamin.menant at gmail.com> a écrit :

> Hello Laurent,
> 
> I upgraded my system and got gdm3:amd64 3.8.4-8.1 installed. After
> reboot, I opened a VC to strace systemd-logind, then I tried to login
> through gdm.
> I attached the log results.
> 
> Eventually, I got back to 3.8.4-6.
> 
> Bob, are you talking about the Gnome Flashback session? I will give
> it a try next time.
> 
> Pascal, I also successfully tried lightdm. I got your point, and thank
> you very much for your messages.
> However, since GDM3 comes with Gnome 3, I am pretty sure it would be
> comfy for most users to just get GDM3 working & stable without
> installing any other package (even if those packages are better in any
> way; it is not the point).
> Also, I am using the **unstable** distribution, and I knew this
> distribution comes with issues. That’s fine. By the way, I guess my
> humble role as a GNU/Debian user is to report bugs, and give the most
> information I can to Maintainers so they can fix those bugs (or not).
> So, IMHO, running away to install an alternative is not a
> solution. ;-)
> 

I think we have identified the issue, basically logind is
started/activated too late. We'll try to fix this to preserve
compatibility with other initsystem than systemd, but I guess it's a
good occasion to start using it if you don't mind :)

I would suggest you to try booting using systemd by setting the init
kernel parameter to /lib/systemd/systemd. If it's successful, you can
install systemd-sysv and _purge_ systemd-shim and then again reboot.