Gnome display manager: "Oh no! Something has gone wrong!"

uep · December 9, 2021, 2:29am

somewhere between revs c71f061c68b and bc5d68306b4, gnome display-manager broke and won’t start.

Rolling back, and just restarting display-manager doesn’t help, so it might be in some earlier service. A reboot is needed on the old config to get it to work again.

This happened on two different machines, one with intel and one with amd gpu.

Here are the changed packages:

[root@oenone:/nix/var/nix/profiles]# nix store diff-closures ./system-149-link ./system-150-link
adwaita-qt: 1.4.0 → 1.4.1
aisleriot: 3.22.19 → 3.22.20, +13.6 KiB
eog: 41.0 → 41.1
gnome-connections: 41.1 → 41.2
gnome-control-center: 41.1 → 41.2
gnome-initial-setup: 41.0 → 41.2
gnome-maps: 41.1 → 41.2
gnome-shell-extension-syncthing-indicator: 21 → 23
linux: +48.2 KiB
nixos-manual: +16.8 KiB
nixos-system-oenone: 22.05pre335501.c71f061c68b → 22.05pre336298.bc5d68306b4
rust-analyzer: 2021-10-25 → 2021-11-29
rust-analyzer-unwrapped: 2021-10-25 → 2021-11-29, +507.7 KiB
sof-firmware: 1.9 → 1.9.2, +597.1 KiB
udisks: 2.8.4 → 2.9.4, +119.8 KiB
yelp: 41.1 → 41.2
yelp-xsl: 41.0 → 41.1

jonringer · December 9, 2021, 3:02am

If you boot up into the broken one, do ctrl+alt+1, then it should switch to a tty. You should be able to log in and do systemctl status display-manager

This should have some output as to what failed.

uep · December 9, 2021, 3:10am

I dropped some logs and other discussion in the NixOS GNOME Matrix channel while I was figuring out what was going on. This post was intended more as a warning to others

Some of these are not new errors, have been seen previously

Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone systemd[1]: Starting X11 Server...
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone systemd[1]: Started X11 Server.
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone systemd-logind[3083]: New session c7 of user gdm.
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone systemd[1]: Started Session c7 of User gdm.
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session[50328]: gnome-session-binary[50328]: WARNING: Failed to upload environment to systemd: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd1" does not exist
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session-binary[50328]: WARNING: Failed to upload environment to systemd: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd1" does not exist
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session[50328]: gnome-session-binary[50328]: WARNING: Failed to reset failed state of units: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd1" does not exist
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session-binary[50328]: WARNING: Failed to reset failed state of units: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd1" does not exist
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session[50328]: gnome-session-binary[50328]: WARNING: Falling back to non-systemd startup procedure due to error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd1" does not exist
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session-binary[50328]: WARNING: Falling back to non-systemd startup procedure due to error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd1" does not exist
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session-binary[50328]: Entering running state
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session[50336]: Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
Dec 09 12:42:04 oenone gnome-session-f[50336]: Cannot open display: 
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone /nix/store/8c92zvlflv5gka582d5svbmbvmyww03q-gdm-41.0/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[50327]: dbus-daemon[50327]: [session uid=132 pid=50327] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.systemd1' requested by ':1.2' (uid=132 pid=50328 comm="/nix/store/p1n9zjyh727r1j5p2nnypy2wc6zjsbwr-gnome-" label="kernel")
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone /nix/store/8c92zvlflv5gka582d5svbmbvmyww03q-gdm-41.0/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[50327]: dbus-daemon[50327]: [session uid=132 pid=50327] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1' failed: Process org.freedesktop.systemd1 exited with status 1
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone gdm[50315]: Gdm: GdmDisplay: Session never registered, failing
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone gdm-launch-environment][50319]: GLib-GObject: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone systemd[1]: session-c7.scope: Deactivated successfully.
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone systemd-logind[3083]: Session c7 logged out. Waiting for processes to exit.
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone systemd-logind[3083]: Removed session c7.
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone gdm[50315]: Gdm: Child process -50323 was already dead.
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone gdm[50315]: Gdm: GdmDisplay: Session never registered, failing
Dec 09 12:42:05 oenone gdm[50315]: Gdm: Child process -50323 was already dead.

then it goes on with the same via X11, with a whole bunch of X server startup but the same outcome

And then it drops to the fail-whale screen, with this for extra amusement:

Dec 09 12:42:06 oenone gnome-session-binary[50397]: Entering running state
Dec 09 12:42:06 oenone gnome-session-f[50453]: Could not find the icon 'computer-fail-symbolic'. The 'hicolor' theme
                                               was not found either, perhaps you need to install it.
                                               You can get a copy from:
                                                       http://icon-theme.freedesktop.org/releases

jtojnar · December 9, 2021, 8:07am

See GDM failing to start on boot: white screen, "Please contact a system administrator" · Issue #149539 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub. Not sure why the tests did not catch that.

uep · December 10, 2021, 2:15am

This has been fixed, but note that the current updated build 581d2d6c9cd5 just missed out on the fix, so you will have to wait for the next one (or use nixos-unstable-small which does have it, and potentially build more from source)