Can't login following upgrade

[avidscavenger]

Hello Debian users,

I'm posting this to a fairly general forum as I'm pretty unsure where the problem lies. Long story short, since upgrading my Debian/unstable amd64 installation a few days back I can no longer log in as either root or user, whether to SDDM, via the console, or via ssh. When trying with the console, I can see the login message flash briefly on the screen, before the console resets itself.

I can boot into recovery mode, and examine log files. I enabled systemd debug logging and, amid reams of messages, these seem the most pertinent:

Sep 25 02:24:43 cooler systemd[1]: Received SIGCHLD from PID 937 (login).
Sep 25 02:24:43 cooler systemd[1]: Child 937 (login) died (code=killed, status=6/ABRT)

I thought there might be a problem with my default shell (bash) but this seems unlikely since a) bash works fine in recovery mode and b) changing the default shell to sh didn't change anything.

Now I don't know where else to look, so posting this in the hope of getting some assistance...

[michapma]

Disconcerting.
Sid is a bad boy.

Welcome to the forums. Have you considered going through the APT logs to get a list of packages that were upgraded before the change in behavior, in hopes of finding the one that might have caused it?

[avidscavenger]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've been too busy to look into this until today. I was hoping that either someone else would encounter the same problem and/or a further upgrade would solve it. But unfortunately neither seems to have happened. On the other hand the fact that no-one else has the same problem might be a clue, although I really don't know what might be specific to my system.

Looking at my dpkg.log I see literally hundreds of packages that have been updated so I really don't know where to start. Any suggestions for what I might look for? Or how to get some more meaningful log? Or somewhere more specialised I could post this help request?

[Bulkley]

I can't speak to your machine but we have been seeing a lot of upgrade problems here that are the result of mixed sources. That can break a system.

[GarryRicketson]

Postby Bulkley » 2015-10-02 19:52
I can't speak to your machine but we have been seeing a lot of upgrade problems here that are the result of mixed sources. That can break a system

Yes this is the most common problem, So,

Probably the best place to start is please post a copy of your ""sources.list"
file,then maybe we can go from there.

From: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstableIntroduction
Debian Unstable (also known by its codename "Sid") is not strictly a release, but rather a rolling development version of the Debian distribution containing the latest and greatest packages which have been introduced into the Debian system. If you are a hardcore developer or tester you should use this release. If you are a power user you might also consider using Debian Testing. The best practices described below are applicable to testing users as well.

Are you a "" hardcore developer or tester "" ?
This comment, makes me think the answer to the above question is no.

Looking at my dpkg.log I see literally hundreds of packages that have been updated so I really don't know where to start. Any suggestions for what I might look for? Or how to get some more meaningful log? Or somewhere more specialised I could post this help request?

It is usually expected that users of this version all ready know how to trouble shoot their system

From: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable
What are some best practices for testing/sid users?
The most important thing is to keep in mind that you are participating in the development of Debian when you are tracking testing or unstable. This means that you should know your way around Linux, Debian and the Debian packaging system and that you should have an interest in tracking down and fixing bugs. There are a couple of things you can do in order to ease your life as a testing/sid user such as:

Always be careful when you perform updates and check if the actions proposed by the package managing tools are in line with your wishes and expectations. (i.e. make sure that you do not remove a plethora of packages you need by blindly accepting the proposed action)
Bearing this in mind, apt-get dist-upgrade to keep your system fully up-to-date, but if the proposed changes do look unreasonable, some of the simpler things that could help are:
put packages on hold until the problem in the archive is resolved,
use apt-get upgrade to avoid removals this time,
simply wait until the archive has settled down to a more reasonable state before upgrading.
Install the apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges packages in order to be made aware of grave bugs or important changes when you install new packages or during an upgrade.
Keep a good live CD/USB such as Debian Live around at all times so you can still work on the system even if it is not booting anymore.
Automatically create daily, weekly and monthly backups in order to ensure that corrupted data is not a problem.

Ok well, there is a lot more in the wiki , I get the impression you did not look at it before you decided to use a unstable version of Debian, maybe you did, I don't know.

Or somewhere more specialised I could post this help request?

A important part of using a unstable version is knowing how to do searches, on your system, as well as online, also there are "mailing lists" used by the developers, to address specific problems,

Do you need me to search for those also ?
https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe
and
https://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-changes/
There are more, you just need to browse and take your pick

On the other hand the fact that no-one else has the same problem might be a clue, although I really don't know what might be specific to my system

Actually a lot have, but I am not sure that any of them are using "SID"Search found 751 matches: +Can't +login +following +upgrade
So any way, sometimes the "sources.list" shows a lot, that would be the best place to start, I don't know to much about "trouble shooting" so that is why I stay away from the unstable and testing versions, to complicated.
But any way, quite a few people do try to use the testing versions, nothing wrong with that. Hope this helps a little.

[avidscavenger]

OK well thanks for the information folks. My system was indeed a hodge-podge of packages from different releases, not to mention ad hoc packages from outside the Debian world. I don't need you to decode my sources.list to tell me that.

I must say I feel a bit like a 50 year old getting asked for ID in a bar. 30 years experience with Unix and 15 using Debian/unstable and because I draw a blank on one issue I get accused of being a newbie? Of course I searched the forums for people with issues that looked like mine, not to mention scouring my logs for signs of trouble.

I use unstable as my base system (and occasionally install from the experimental release as well) because I frequently want to use cutting or bleeding edge applications. My system will sometimes break because of this. I know. It's my choice. I thought I could ask politely for advice without being told I was out of my depth.

As for testing, it falls over at the first hurdle - no ecryptfs-utils.

[GarryRicketson]

I must say I feel a bit like a 50 year old getting asked for ID in a bar. 30 years experience with Unix and 15 using Debian/unstable and because I draw a blank on one issue I get accused of being a newbie?

Hmm, Ok, well if they asked me for my ID, at a bar, I would take it as a compliment,
Any way, sorry if that bothered you,

I thought I could ask politely for advice without being told I was out of my depth.

But it is kind of "out of my depth", probably I shouldn't have said anything, it may take a while for anyone that knows enough to say much on this to respond,

Looking at my dpkg.log I see literally hundreds of packages that have been updated so I really don't know where to start.

With so many packages updated , (recently ?) that would make it hard.
What desktop environment, or desktop, or windows manager are you using ?
And do you use a "nvidia graphic card" ?
If the following does not lead to a solution, with some more details on your system,
I might be able to get some more info.
And I just stumbled on to this just now:

http://ralph.soika.com/debian-gdm3-gnom ... t-upgrade/
If it was me, I would just try installing "mate", but that is my preference, but also, lately I have been reading a lot of things that make me think there are a lot of problems with GNOme

I installed lightdm and xfce to get back a working desktop. But I can’t figure out whats going wrong until my last upgrade.

Of course if you are not using Gnome, this would not apply to you. So perhaps some more details ?.
---------------------
What is the out put of :

Code: Select all

systemctl -l status gdm.service

(or gdm3.service)
--------------
There is also this topic/thread here: On this forum:
Recent upgrade in jessie broke gdm
------------------------
As much experience as you have you probably know this, but any way,
there might be some use full info in

Code: Select all

tail -n 10 /var/log/Xorg.0.log 

or any of the logs in ,

Code: Select all

/var/log

If it was me, I would just try installing "mate", but that is my preference, but also, lately I have been reading a lot of things that make me think there are a lot of problems with GNOme, and even more so, with the most recent testing packages,..I have not used gnome, now for some time, and have no plans on using it in the future.
But that is another topic.
And for now, I can not think of much else.

[avidscavenger]

OK thanks again. I don't use gnome but sddm/kde, but even after I removed them entirely I was still unable to log in even from the console.

The message I have taken from this is that there is no easy way to track down the problem, which is most likely due to incompatible libraries from different sources, which incorrectly specified dependencies have allowed to be co-installed. A pity I can't work out which process is actually failing or crashing, but so goes it.

I have therefore shunted my system aside and build a new sid installation which is working fine. I can still chroot into the old system and run my weird apps from there. Unless it would be useful to anyone really interested in finding the problem I don't plan to boot my old installation any more.