[nmglug] No GUI desktop

[Mark Galassi]

Too much in this thread for me to have read it all, but I have 
handled
these often.  If you're downtown on Sunday call me (write 
privately for
phone #) and I'll look at it with you.

The things to do from a virtual console are to

sudo apt /etc/init.d/lightdm stop
sudo apt /etc/init.d/gdm3 stop
sudo apt /etc/init.d/kdm stop
sudo apt /etc/init.d/xdm stop

and so on for any *dm.  Then you try your startx.  You can also 
try a
restart on the less flakey display managers, like gdm3 ("sudo
/etc/init.d/gdm3 restart")

If you are experimenting with our GUI running you can run "startx 
-- :2"
(or :3 or higher) to see what happens.

For this list attaching the full /var/log/Xorg.0.log might be 
useful, as
well as transcripts of startx with different displays like :2 or 
:3.

On thing I'm not clear on is what really happens when you power on 
the
computer.  Your original email (I was unable to follow all the
followups) does not make it clear if that first login you do is
graphical or on a virtual text console.

If the former, then the whole rest of the message is strange 
because
starting X from an alread-graphical situation is not the thing to 
try.

If that first login is on a virtual text console then your 
situation
seems to be that you booted and it came up with vt1 instead of 
vt7, but
at the same time automatically logged you in as guest on vt7.  I 
have
never seen that, and it smells of some weird mucking with user 
accounts.
Make sure that guest is not set to automatically log in.

Among other problems with the precision of this problem report is 
that
you don't mention what desktop is your default, and which one 
comes up
when you go to vt7 and are logged in as guest.  Maybe it's in the 
many
later messages.

Anyway, call me up if you're downtown and we'll experiment.