Arch Linux

warezIbanez

Member

Registered: 2017-03-27

Posts: 14

[Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

Hello there, I have been installing Arch Linux on a few computers I have, essentially attempting to replace other distros. With that, I have a couple computers that were manufactured around late 2003/ early 2004, so they're running i686 and aren't by any means running the greatest hardware. With that said, I've installed Arch on these older computers, have been able to get network connections on them, even have startx running on them. The only problem that I have seen with them so far is that I have been unable to get a display manager & desktop environment (LightDM & LXqt) to run on either machine, both ending up stating the following error:

https://paste.pound-python.org/show/7PD … ATVCNEEwk/
(This was running systemctl status lightdm.service)

https://paste.pound-python.org/show/qxS … mQsVZiskQ/
(Running journalctl, for some reason I wasn't able to use the -xe flag and output; check around line 3615, I think)

Let me know if any other information is needed and I'll respond as quickly as I can.

Last edited by warezIbanez (2017-03-30 00:02:04)

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,967

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

(Running journalctl, for some reason I wasn't able to use the -xe flag and output;

Please do not add -x to journalctl outputs ( see https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/ … 13029.html ) ( -e should not make any difference to the output )
Please post the contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log and /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log

warezIbanez

Member

Registered: 2017-03-27

Posts: 14

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

https://paste.pound-python.org/show/Ul9 … phHtqej2U/
Here's /var/log/Xorg.0.log

https://paste.pound-python.org/show/rQ4 … 98aHi8GSL/
Here's the lightdm.log

Looking at it, it states it couldn't create the greeter session because of not finding a session configuration on the gtk-greeter, but I'm pretty certain I installed the deepin-session-ui instead. I then peered into the lightdm.conf file and saw that I accidentally left the greeter-session line commented (appearing as #greeter-session=deepin_session_ui until I removed the pound sign,) but now I am left with the following lightdm.log after saving the conf file and attempting to start the display manager once more:

https://paste.pound-python.org/show/a5Z … igQqUCDKR/

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,967

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

# pacman -Fy
$ pacman -Fl deepin-session-ui | grep lightdm
deepin-session-ui usr/bin/lightdm-deepin-greeter
deepin-session-ui usr/share/xgreeters/lightdm-deepin-greeter.desktop

warezIbanez

Member

Registered: 2017-03-27

Posts: 14

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

Looks like those first two commands ran without errors displayed, but it's still giving the same latest errors through systemctl service and lightdm.log.

Raynman

Member

Registered: 2011-10-22

Posts: 1,539

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

You didn't have to run those commands; loqs already included the output. (But it's good to learn what pacman's -F operation does anyway.) It shows that the greeter is called lightdm-deepin-greeter, not deepin_session_ui or deepin-session-ui.

Last edited by Raynman (2017-03-29 09:16:25)

warezIbanez

Member

Registered: 2017-03-27

Posts: 14

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

Very true, Raynman. I'm still fairly new to Arch but picking stuff up, so I'm sure I'll have to search packages for other potential issues in the future.

And yes, I just replaced lightdm-deepin-greeter with deepin-session-ui in the lightdm.conf file. So the deepin greeter has loaded, huzzah! Now I need to see about getting LXqt to load (currently providing the account password turns the screen blank before having the greeter display again and prompt for a password.) I'm guessing that is now a separate issue.

warezIbanez

Member

Registered: 2017-03-27

Posts: 14

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

So I have run into another problem with LightDM- as mentioned before, the deepin greeter loads, but inputting username and password ends up closing the greeter and showing a cursor wheel and blinking terminal before it loads the greeter again, prompting for the password (and repeating the process achieves the same outcome.) From there, I went back to terminal and checked on the lightdm.log and got this:

https://paste.pound-python.org/show/miJ … PFRWF9YWv/

I'm not finding much on "g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed" so far.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,967

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

check ~/.xsession-errors of the user you tried to log in to.
Log excerpt from this system.

[+4.14s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Stopping greeter; display server will be re-used for user session
[+4.14s] DEBUG: Terminating login1 session c1
[+4.14s] DEBUG: Session pid=587: Sending SIGTERM
[+4.15s] DEBUG: Greeter closed communication channel
[+4.15s] DEBUG: Session pid=587: Exited with return value 0
[+4.15s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Session stopped
[+4.15s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Greeter stopped, running session
[+4.15s] DEBUG: Registering session with bus path /org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session0
[+4.15s] CRITICAL: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
[+4.15s] DEBUG: Session pid=643: Running command /etc/lightdm/Xsession cinnamon-session-cinnamon

Is the session-wrapper disabled in /etc/lightdm.conf?

session-wrapper=/etc/lightdm/Xsession

warezIbanez

Member

Registered: 2017-03-27

Posts: 14

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

check ~/.xsession-errors of the user you tried to log in to.

Either there's no file there or nothing has been written.

Is the session-wrapper disabled in /etc/lightdm.conf?

session-wrapper=/etc/lightdm/Xsession

It was commented out. Upon uncommenting and starting lightdm again, it went directly to the greeter before going to a blank blinking terminal cursor.

warezIbanez

Member

Registered: 2017-03-27

Posts: 14

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

Hmm, so I found that I also didn't have a ~/.xinitrc file on my user account, so I added this to the file after copying /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc over, then I added this to the file:

xscreensaver &
exec openbox-session

So running startx can now open up Openbox for me, but still attempting to start the LightDM service gives me issues.

Edit:
I restarted the computer after I wasn't able to return to terminal from starting LightDM, and now I managed to get past the greeter & use Openbox and now LXqt after logging out of that session. So, I think I will add [solved] to the title of the OP. Afterwards, I will try to compose a final post on the solution(s,) as I will be returning to this post with another computer with nearly the same issue.

Last edited by warezIbanez (2017-03-30 00:01:40)

warezIbanez

Member

Registered: 2017-03-27

Posts: 14

Re: [Solved] Failed to start Light Display Manager

I wanted to post a last response as to what the solutions to the problems were.

The problem to the greeter not displaying was that I had the incorrect name to the Deepin greeter (I was using the package name, deepin-session-ui rather than lightdm-deepin-greeter as I am utilizing Light Desktop Manager.) I had already un-commented the line, but to remind everyone out there, un-comment the line for greeter-session.

The second main issue appears that the line for session-wrapper was commented. It shouldn't be by default (as I had checked a couple other computers I had installed Arch on,) yet it was on the system with these issues.

The system should have been fine from there, but I did end up copying /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc to create a new ~/.xinitrc in the event LightDM & LXqt refused to display after a restart- thankfully they did. I still replaced a couple lines in ~/.xinitrc to run Openbox in lieu of xterm, xclock and twm in case things go south someday (though doubtful.) Here's the code for that:

xscreensaver &
exec openbox-session

Hopefully this helps someone else out in the event they run into similar issues. Now... time for me to see if I can get a rare and old Matrox card to work with Arch...