Hi there!
I don’t think this is gdm3’s fault, but I think folks who know gdm3 well are in the best position to point me in the right direction, so I’m asking here! I’m hoping finding the answer will help future people in my situation.
tl;dr: I upgraded from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04, and now after gdm3 starts it displays a graphical crash screen. (As sad computer with “x x” for eyes plus the words “Oh No! Something has gone wrong.”) No obvious error messages in the logs. I’ve uploaded the debug logs. I would love if it someone could take a stab at interpreting what’s going on.
The longer story is this is an Intel desktop with an Nvidia TU106-A (RTX 2070). I normally run proprietary drivers but at this point I’ll take anything that works. As mentioned, I’m attempting to run Ubuntu 24.04, and also–as far as i can tell–I’ve resolved all graphics drivers headaches by using Ubuntu’s provided proprietary drivers. Here’s what I’ve tried:
- hand-installing Nvidia drivers downloaded directly from their website–crashes with the unhappy computer graphic.
- using nouveau–crashes with a black screen. No obvious error messages in the logs.
- using lightdm and lxdm (they crash with generic messages in the logs–this is why I don’t think it’s gdm3’s fault)
- using wayland with gdm3. (Admittedly I don’t know what I’m doing I just set
WaylandEnable=falsein/etc/gdm3/custom.confand hoped for the best.) I only found an error message fromdunst, but otherwise it silently failed. - booting from a fresh live Ubuntu 24.04.01 USB Image–crashes with the unhappy computer graphic.
- booting from a fresh live Ubuntu 24.10 beta USB Image–works! It uses Wayland + nouveaux behind the scenes. Maybe that’s the answer?
- scrubbing my system of old unpackages libraries and drivers
So yeah. I’m a bit frustrated. But hopeful I can help the next person who googles this problem. I’ve uploaded debug level gdm logs here and I’d love it if someone can pinpoint where gdm is crashing and what might be the cause so i can look there.
Thanks in advance!
Geoff