Re: ‘staging’ and GNOME updates

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:

> Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> skribis:
>
>> I just tested the new(er) GNOME on staging and unfortunately it is *not*
>> working.  I reconfigured my workstation which previously also used
>> GNOME.
>>
>> I see a mouse pointer appearing, but gnome-shell never seems to properly
>> start.  (I’m using auto-login, so I don’t see the GDM login prompt first.)
[…]
> Everything in the VM seems to work, as discussed on IRC.
>
> So this suggests that the problem may have to do with state kept
> somewhere in GSettings or who knows what.
>
> Could you share logs from /var/log/messages, /var/log/gdm/greeter.log,
> and anything that may be relevant?

The logs are not helpful at all.  I even went through an strace of gdm
and couldn’t find anything interesting amidst all the noise.

Turns out that the problem was with a stale /var/lib/gdm – which makes
me wonder: we do we have this at all?  “/var/lib/gdm” is the “gdm” user
account’s home directory.  But it’s not like this really needs to be
persistent, I think.

I moved it out of the way and the gdm login prompt appeared within a few
seconds.  After restarting xorg-server the directory was recreated.

Now, I *still* cannot actually log in, but the problem is likely very
similar.

[two minutes pass]

Yup, after moving /home/rekado/.cache out of the way, everything is fine
and I can log in.

What should we do about this?  For gdm I think it would make sense to
add an activation service extension that clears the gdm user’s home
directory.  And more generally, maybe we should offer a generic cache
cleaner service.

Thoughts?

--
Ricardo