Problems starting gdm after minimal installation

[ghost]

I followed the steps detailed on the bare metal install guide and the create and enable a new userspace one. [EDIT: I also have tried the VMWare disk image installation] I tried them both on a bare metal compatible system and on VMware Player 14 and in both cases when I reach the systemctl start gdm step nothing happens

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Install the system following the aforementioned guides

Expected behaviour
The gdm interface should start and connect to the Xorg server

Screenshots
Xorg verbose output after trying to start it for the first time:

Xorg verbose output anfter trying to start it at subsequent times:

Environment:

• Clear Linux OS version:
  NAME="Clear Linux OS"
  VERSION=1
  ID=clear-linux-os
  VERSION_ID=25140
  PRETTY_NAME="Clear Linux OS"
  ANSI_COLOR="1;35"
  HOME_URL="https://clearlinux.org"
  SUPPORT_URL="https://clearlinux.org"
  BUG_REPORT_URL="mailto:dev@lists.clearlinux.org"
  PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="http://www.intel.com/privacy"
• Bundles:
  bootloader
  c-basic
  containers-basic
  desktop
  desktop-apps
  desktop-assets
  desktop-gnomelibs
  desktop-locales
  dev-utils
  dev-utils-dev
  editors
  emacs
  ethtool
  git
  go-basic
  iproute2
  joe
  kernel-native
  koji
  kvm-host
  libX11client
  mail-utils
  mail-utils-dev
  mixer
  network-basic
  network-basic-dev
  openssh-server
  openssl
  os-clr-on-clr
  os-core
  os-core-dev
  os-core-update
  os-core-update-dev
  os-installer
  p11-kit
  package-utils
  perl-basic
  perl-basic-dev
  python2-basic
  python3-basic
  storage-utils
  storage-utils-dev
  sudo
  sysadmin-basic
  sysadmin-basic-dev
  telemetrics
  vim
  web-server-basic
  which
  wpa_supplicant
  xemacs

I also attach the Xorg.0.log
file for further troubleshooting

[puneetse]

@Alec423 while I believe the steps you followed should have worked and there is an addressable issue here, I just want to add a tip that there is a preconfigured VMware disk image available too: https://clearlinux.org/documentation/clear-linux/get-started/virtual-machine-install/vmw-player-preconf

It may help you get up and running sooner. The preconfigured disk image includes an optimized kernel for VMware guests and likely includes the missing Xorg driver.

[ghost]

@puneetse I’m sorry, but I tried the preconfigured disk image too and gives the same problems

[puneetse]

@Alec423 ah, thanks for trying and confirming.

[ahkok]

Confirmed, this seems to be breaking on xwayland, which is crashing.

[ahkok]

On my Atom processor, I get:

(EE) Illegal instruction at address 0x...

Whether this is the same root cause as the other reports, I do not yet know. However, this is certainly a bug we should be able to fix.

[ahkok]

If you are seeing this issue and you have Xwayland errors in journalctl, you can try the following:

# cat /etc/gdm/custom.conf 
[daemon]
WaylandEnable=false

That will force gdm not to use Xwayland and may work around the issue (It did for me)

[ghost]

@ahkok In the base install there is nothing of such kind, the folder /etc/gdm/ isn't even present, let alone the config file to edit

[mrkz]

@Alec423 yes, we ship empty /etc/ due to stateless, but you can safely do

# mkdir -p /etc/gdm

# cat > /etc/gdm/custom.conf << EOF
[daemon]
WaylandEnable=false
EOF

[miguelinux]

@ahkok In the base install there is nothing of such kind, the folder /etc/gdm/ isn't even present, let alone the config file to edit

You can create the missing directories and files to do user/admin configurations. https://clearlinux.org/features/stateless

[ghost]

@mrkz unfortunately it still doesn’t work even after creating the folder and the conf file

[ahkok]

@Alec423 make sure to restart your system. Can you post the output of journalctl -b somewhere (e.g. gist.github.com?) and include a link to it? Are you seeing Illegal Instruction anywhere?

[ghost]

@ahkok this is an extract from the complete log showing a typical boot + login + poweroff case, didn't find any Illegal Instruction

https://gist.github.com/Alec423/7fd9ee338a74cb72ddad54625f426d7a

[ahkok]

Yeah, it seems the VMware virtual machine is a different error path and unrelated to the Illegal Instruction (it doesn't use Xwayland afaics, even)

[ghost]

@ahkok I don't have any powerful computer to install clearlinux quickly on and confront the journalctl; is this suggesting that both the VMWare installation and the bare metal one have the same gdm problem but generating from a different source?

[miguelinux]

I got a coredump when I use my laptop in lid and connected with external monitor

$ coredumpctl 
TIME                            PID   UID   GID SIG COREFILE  EXE
Tue 2018-09-25 14:45:57 CDT     713   311   311  11 error     /usr/bin/gnome-shell
Tue 2018-09-25 14:45:57 CDT     721   311   311   6 error     /usr/bin/Xwayland

BUT

When I set /etc/gdm/custom.conf, it works well.

[ahkok]

different problem entirely.

[ahkok]

25400 solves the SIGILL problem. Other issues may remain, so, I'm keeping this bug open

[yakuizhao]

Any progress about this issue?

[ahkok]

Someone needs to try/test on VMware, which was the original bug report.

[mountainerd]

Not sure if it's directly applicable here but the symptoms and error output look similar. Recently, when I did a minimal install, then installed the desktop, then tried to login, it barfed like this. Turns out the installer set the ownership on my home directory to root:root. Once I resolved that, errors went away,

[mrkz]

@Alec423 could you please try to verify the VMware issue still persists? As far as I can see, we are providing /usr/lib64/dri/vmwgfx_dri.so (verified on CLR release 28610). Otherwise we should be able to close this bug now.

Thanks!