Fedora 26: Gnome Shell doesn't come up after login from GDM.

asked 2017-11-30 11:44:48 -0600

440 ●11 ●22 ●33

updated 2017-12-01 10:02:55 -0600

Hi, I am having a multi-user workstation that runs an up-to-date Fedora26 (x86_64).

The problem is that for my main user the Gnome shell wouldn't come up. I can login but then I see a grey screen and a mouse pointer and nothing else happens. The problem appears no matter if choose a Wayland, an Xorg or even a Gnome Classic session.

I have no problem logging into Gnome with any other user on the system.

Any ideas how to approach this? Is it possible that a bad extensions prevents the Gnome Shell from coming up? Should I try to delete them? It somehow has to be related to user settings since other users can login into Gnome without any problems. How to find out what causes this "crash"?

Thanks!

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I had a similar challenge but was thrown out instead of getting a blank or grey screen. After logging in three times and got thrown out, it logged me in and it worked as usual.

derdoktor ( 2017-12-01 04:06:08 -0600 )edit

Q: does the screen remain gray, when you wait 1 or 2 minutes? I had a simular problem, see login takes 40 secondes before it starts

kdg1955 ( 2017-12-02 15:18:32 -0600 )edit

I had a similar idea and thought I just need to wait for some process to time out but I waited as long as 30 minutes and nothing happened - the screen remained grey.

gobigobi66 ( 2017-12-12 13:52:50 -0600 )edit

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answered 2017-12-12 13:49:43 -0600

gobigobi66

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Answering my own question.

I deleted all extension (located in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions and that fixed the problem, I could login into Gnome Shell again. All I had to do was to reinstall the extensions but that was a fairly easy task.

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answered 2017-11-30 19:02:41 -0600

dreua
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First, switch to a text console: Ctrl+Alt+F4 (Or some other F-Key. F1 and/or F2 should be GDM and Gnome. You can switch back and forth as you desire.)

Login to the text console using your Username and Password. Does that work? Any errors?

If you can login: Try the "startx" command to start Gnome. Does it work? (In case it works you can use this as a temporary workaround. You can go back to the text-only console by logging out of Gnome.)

If you can login in text mode, do this with your account. If you can't, do this logged in with another account: Run "journalctl --follow" to see the system log. Switch back to the Graphical login screen and try logging in. Switch back to the text console running journalctl to see if any errors pop up. (You can do this via SSH too, if you have it set up. Debugging is much more comfortable from another computer via SSH imo.)

If you need further assistance, provide as much information as possible. (Edit your question or comment. You can use the fpaste command to easily upload log files and post the links here.)

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I can login from a console without any problems. I can also startx from there (there is some warnings since X has been started before already). As I stated in my question, Gnome Shell starts fine with other users on that system.

I can run journalctl --follow later to see what that information it reveals. I have looked through the journal before but there is just so much information. Moreover, I have no clue what to look for.

gobigobi66 ( 2017-12-01 10:01:19 -0600 )edit

Sounds good! I agree, just looking at the journal is too much information, thats why I would recommend running journalctl --follow in a SSH session so you have a live log-view of your failing login attempt. Good luck! (I my case it was an old autostart .desktop file with a missing binary that made the Gnome login fail. I can have a look at the logs if you upload them to but I'm not sure I will find something.)

dreua ( 2017-12-01 10:25:58 -0600 )edit

you can clean your conf directories ~/.local/share/gnome-* or move them somewhere else to test if it's coming from it. Warning , this way you will lose you shell extension and configuration.

baoboa ( 2017-12-01 16:33:15 -0600 )edit

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Fedora 26: Gnome Shell doesn't come up after login from GDM.

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