This is a laptop with a broken internal display (”LVDS1” in xrandr output), and therefore connected to a working external LCD (”VGA1”).

After upgrading from Precise to Trusty, boot ends with a black screen (on the external display). The greeter sound effect is played. Typing my password (I’m the sole user) does log me in, and brings up the desktop on the display.

So the login functionality is there, just the visuals are missing. And they do flash by (corrupted) when the desktop is loading; if I set automatic login for myself, I get a desktop with the login screen as the background image (I’ll attach a screenshot).

There are existing, similar reports but all with subtle differences from this (such as Bug #1252748, where the user only gets black screen half the time) or too vague for me to claim to be the same issue with certainty (such as Bug #1242213). A lightdm restart (such as in Bug #969489) doesn’t fix this (i.e. black screen still after lightdm restart).

I’m not sure whether this is a lightdm issue or a unity-greeter one, so my reporting this against the latter is just a guess.

I currently have a 100% reliable recipe for reproducing this in 12.04: trying to restore a saved session of Trusty crashes VirtualBox 4.3.2 (from Oracle), after which Apport’s ”TypeError(Error(’Incorrect padding’,),)” pops up. (The recipe works also after removing crash files from /var/crash.)

Hi Christopher.

I was unable to test the Saucy images and the latest mainline kernel, as they refuse to boot/install on the Amilo due to lack of PAE support.

jani@kingugidora:~$ LC_ALL=C sudo dpkg –install linux-image-3.11.0-031100rc6-generic_3.11.0-031100rc6.201308181835_i386.deb
(Reading database … 818498 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking linux-image-3.11.0-031100rc6-generic (from linux-image-3.11.0-031100rc6-generic_3.11.0-031100rc6.201308181835_i386.deb) …
This kernel does not support a non-PAE CPU.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-3.11.0-031100rc6-generic_3.11.0-031100rc6.201308181835_i386.deb (–install):
subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
Examining /etc/kernel/postrm.d .
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/initramfs-tools 3.11.0-031100rc6-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.11.0-031100rc6-generic
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/zz-update-grub 3.11.0-031100rc6-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.11.0-031100rc6-generic
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-image-3.11.0-031100rc6-generic_3.11.0-031100rc6.201308181835_i386.deb

I guess the only (unimportant) question remaining is how come I was able to boot -pae kernels on this very same device back in the pre-release times (3.2.0-[<23]) – perhaps those earlier kernels didn’t properly detect the lack of PAE?

The wireless now (with the current 3.2.0-52-generic #78-Ubuntu) seems to somehow work without wistron_btns.

I’m not sure how to deal with the tags & bug status in this case, so I’ll leave it to your discretion. If you have further ideas to test, I’ll be happy to provide, but closing this report (perhaps as ’Invalid’) is also fine by me.

Hi Thomas, sure. Yes, the bug is still reproducible in Precise (gimp 2.6.12-1ubuntu1.2), which is what I’m using on my main desktop. But the good news is I can’t reproduce it in VMs running Raring or Saucy (both of which currently have gimp 2.8.4-1ubuntu1), so it looks like it’s been fixed in the 2.8.4 series at the very latest.

This is basically the same as bug #870297, but for LXDM.

Systems using LXDM have no entries in the utmp record for logins, so tools like ’w’ and ’who’ do not show LXDM sessions.

Testcase:
1. Start Lubuntu system
2. Log into session
3. Open gnome-terminal
4. Run ’who’ command

Expected result:
You should see TWO entries (the first is from LXDM, the second is from gnome-terminal):
tty7 YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM
pts/0 YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (:0)

Observed result:
You see only one entry:
pts/0 YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (:0)

Additional info:
Used gnome-terminal just for consistency with the LightDM report; lxterminal also doesn’t seem to update login records so if you use it instead, observed result is actually ”no entries at all” (and issue for another report). Also, bug #1027805 about wtmp records is similarly applicable to LXDM, but that remains to be fixed even in LightDM…

Also reproducible with chromium-browser 28.0.1500.52-0ubuntu1.12.04.2 (in 12.04).

As the original reporter, I’m confirming that 5.20.0-0ubuntu2 from -proposed does contain the fix for this bug, i.e. the issue I reported above is no longer reproducible. I’m only hesitant about tagging this ’verification-done’ because PerformingSRUVerification is pretty adamant about having a solid test case and I’m not sure my sloppy initial report qualifies.

jani@saegusa:~$ LC_ALL=C apt-cache policy unity
unity:
Installed: 5.20.0-0ubuntu2
Candidate: 5.20.0-0ubuntu2
Version table:
*** 5.20.0-0ubuntu2 0
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-proposed/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
5.18.0-0ubuntu2 0
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main amd64 Packages
5.10.0-0ubuntu6 0
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages

Christopher, your test packages do indeed fix this, excellent! As I mentioned in the report, this was 100% reproducible with the packages from -proposed, and now with the packages from your PPA I could no longer reproduce it at all, during the multiple test logins I did.

Definitely not a showstopper for me Christopher, just a minor annoyance, so it’s a go-ahead from me. Thanks for asking!

Yep, that’s exactly the issue as it occurs here too. Thanks for looking into this Christopher! If you do get this narrowed down and need testing for potentially fixed builds, I’ll be happy to try them out.