Is Wayland the default DE in a buster upgrade from stretch?

[bryanmc]

I recently tried to upgrade stretch 9.9 to buster. I had stretch running cinnamon desktop. After the upgrade cinnamon would not start in the normal or fall back mode. The only thing that would start was the window manager and the only item displayed was the conky window I use. I wasn't able to spend much time troubleshooting and had to restore my 9.9 image in order to complete a couple projects.

I've been searching the web looking for ideas on what the issue may have been and it seems only gnome and plasma currently work with wayland. Would it be reasonable to assume that the issue was caused because of the conflict between cinnamon and wayland and if so, is there a way to specify x-org as the DE during the upgrade?

Thanks

[GarryRicketson]

Neither Wayland or X-org are DE's , I suggest doing some research on this first, and after you do the research, if you still have questions, feel free to ask.
To help you get started: use key words :

Code: Select all

What is Wayland ? 

First hit: https://wayland.freedesktop.org/
The same, for X-org, "what is xorg ?"
First hit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.Org_Server

The default DE, if you selected that when you installed, is Gnome, But you say you used the "Cinnamon" DE, I do see you say you searched the web,

I've been searching the web looking for ideas

And maybe you did, maybe you didn't, it would help if we knew what keywords you actually used, but I am inclined to think you did not really search anything. To go into all of the differences between Wayland and Xorg, try:

Code: Select all

What is the diifferences between Wayland and Xorg 

The only thing that would start was the window manager

What window manager ? Please be more specific.
Finally :

is there a way to specify x-org as the DE during the upgrade?

NO, since X-org is not a DE, there is no way to do that. When I upgrade the Debian 9.8 to Buster, I was using Xorg, and still am on Buster, there was no need to specify it.
Apparently something went wrong your DE "Cinnamon" during the upgrade, my thoughts are to just try re-installing Cinnamon", but if you want anyone to help you:

I wasn't able to spend much time troubleshooting and had to restore my 9.9 image in order to complete a couple projects.

You are going to either need to spend some time trouble shooting, or spend some time giving better details then what you have done here, EG: Exactly how you upgraded, and what was in your /etc/apt/sources.list file when you upgraded. exactly, and please use code boxes for any code details,... if you expect others to do your "trouble shooting" at least have the courtesy to give sufficient details.

[bryanmc]

You're right of course Gary. I used the wrong terminology for what wayland and x-org actually are referring to them as desktop environments as opposed to display servers. Perhaps you missed that this was not an "install" but an upgrade of a stretch 9.9 machine running the cinnamon desktop done by following the steps in the release notes which included commenting out any non debian repositories ("deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian stretch contrib" was the only one) and editing the existing "stretch" repositories to point to "buster".

I apologize that I didn't take notice of what window manager presented itself after cinnamon failed to load after numerous attempts. When time allows I'll attempt to do the upgrade again and try to pay better attention to the details if it fails again and try to do more complex searches than "Debian 9.9 upgrade to Debian 10 cinnamon fails to start" and "cinnamon running under wayland" to identify the problem, which was what led me to believe that the problem possibly centered around wayland running instead of x-org.

[GarryRicketson]

Are you using Wayland on the Debian 9 ? I don't use Cinnamon, and was not using it before, so that is the big difference between yours and mine, the point is though, I had xorg as my display server , and when I upgraded it stayed the same.
I did not miss the fact that it was a upgrade, however, I see this now:
https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190706

In this release, GNOME defaults to using the Wayland display server instead of Xorg. Wayland has a simpler and more modern design, which has advantages for security. However, the Xorg display server is still installed by default and the default display manager allows users to choose Xorg as the display server for their next session.

You should read it all, but since you might not have time, and if you want to take my word for it, it just does not say about Cinnamon , it does show it is available, but says nothing about Wayland being the default for Cinnamon, like it does for Gnome. I would think that means it is not the default on Cinnamon.

When time allows I'll attempt to do the upgrade again and try to pay better attention to the details ----snip---

That would be best, my experience is that doing installations, or upgrades, it is important to take my time, be sure to have the time, and pay attention to what is going on, it is slow, and a bit tedious, but important, when I did my upgrade, there were some questions asked in the process, off hand I don't remember what they were, but at one point, I had left the room, expecting it to proceed, went to eat dinner , when I got back, expecting it to be finished , nooo, it had stopped and was patiently waiting for my response, if I had been there watching , it would have finished faster, because I would have responded, and it would have continued,... so any way just saying,... It is important to take your time on it.

[bryanmc]

Thanks Gary...
I'm not using wayland on stretch, I'm using x-org with cinnamon. While I was digging around, I also remember seeing something about the 304.xx nvidia driver being obsoleted but I'm running 340.106. I don't think that's the issue but I may dig into that some also. Obviously something is stopping cinnamon from starting (even in fall back mode) so I'll just keep digging until I find it.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Check the X.org & display manager logs and the systemd journal for any clues.

[bryanmc]

Had a chance to try upgrading again. This time I didn't even get a window manager and was unable to get X started. I think the issue was caused by apt installing an incompatible video driver. My card won't run anything newer than legacy 390.xx but apt installed 4.xx. I ran 'modprobe -r nvidia' and tried to reinstall the correct driver through apt, but had no network connectivity for some reason (although inxi showed I was connected).

So where I stand now is that I re-imaged th disks with stretch for the time being and will try another upgrade when I get the chance making sure to mark nvidia pkg as hold (or completely removing nvidia and going back to nouveau for the upgrade). I like learning and this is surely becoming a learning experience. Appreciate the input.