Bug#1116563: gdm3: Version 49 does not start properly

[Simon McVittie]

On Sun, 28 Sep 2025 at 20:08:07 +0300, Dmitry Shachnev wrote:
>Sep 28 19:58:28 l3 unix_chkpwd[1094]: could not obtain user info (gdm-greeter)

What modules does your /etc/nsswitch.conf have registered for the 
passwd, group, shadow and gshadow databases? A typical setup would look 
like this:

passwd:         files systemd
group:          files systemd
shadow:         files systemd
gshadow:        files systemd

The new gdm version requires libnss-systemd ("systemd" in 
/etc/nsswitch.conf) for its handling of dynamic creation/deletion of 
temporary user IDs.

gdm3 Depends on libnss-systemd, and installing that package *should* set 
it up in nsswitch.conf automatically, but one possible reason for the 
gdm "greeter" (login prompt) not to start up successfully is that this 
somehow hasn't happened.

>The previous log was already with DEBUG_INVOCATION=1.

I'm surprised by this, I would have expected to see at least one 
"GLib-DEBUG" message from gdm at some point in its lifetime.

     smcv