Shawn, Thanks for your help. When I tried the solutions you suggested I got messages saying that gdm was not found. Indeed when is looked in /etc/init.d/ I couldn't find gdm or kde.
So after stumbling around for some time I installed gnome3 following the suggestion in http://www.filiwiese.com/installing-gnome-on-ubuntu-12-04-precise-pangolin/. Success! Every thing seems to work now except I get a "Low Disk Space" warning saying that "Filessystem root" has only 404.6MM disk space remaining" and suggesting I get rid of unused programs and move files to another disk, i.e. my 500GB HD. I'll work on that later. Thanks again for your help. Robin On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Shawn <[email protected]> wrote: > You are getting past the boot sequence and then encountering problems with > the desktop environment. I've seen this sort of thing before. Most > recently I just updated to the latest version (12.04) on a separate hard > drive. In the past, I would delete the xorg.conf file (rename it really) > and let the system recreate it. > > At the very least, you should be able to do CTRL-ALT-F1 (twice) to get to > a command prompt. There you can do everything you need. You might try to > simply restart the graphical environment: > > sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart > > (if you are using KDE and the KDE login window, then replace "gdm" with > "kdm") > > I haven't had to mess with the X-Server config for quite some time, so I'm > not sure what Ubuntu is doing there these days. But, in the past I would do > > sudo dpkg-reconfig gdm > > (or "kdm" for the KDE users) This would often fix the graphical > environment. > > Hope that helps. > > Shawn > > > On 12-10-11 02:38 PM, Richard Carter wrote: > >> Thanks for the tip. I checked the apt history but nothing seemed amiss. >> But I didn't really know what to look for. >> >> Robin >> >> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Dafydd Crosby <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> Hmm, you might want to check your apt history to see if something >> got updated in the background that is causing the problem. >> >> -Dafydd >> >> >> On 10/11/2012 12:06 PM, Richard Carter wrote: >> >> This morning for the first time ubuntu 12.04 LTS wouldn't start. >> Here are the details. >> >> My desktop PC has 2 drives: a 500GB HD and a 256GB SSD. Ubuntu >> 12.04 is installed on the SSD and Debian 6.0 is installed on >> the HD. Up until now both worked well: Debian still works well. >> >> When I boot to Ubuntu the system gets to the point where the >> wallpaper to be used for the desktop is displayed together with >> a small window asking for user name and password. When I enter >> the password I get the message ' Failed to load session >> "cairo-dock" ' and a log out button is displayed. I get the >> same response when I try the other log in options available in >> the small window. >> >> I then started in recovery mode and tried: fsck, clean, dpkg(fix >> broken packages) and grub(update boot loader). None of these >> had any effect. >> >> I would be grateful for advice. >> >> Robin >> >> >> >> ______________________________**___________________ >> clug-talk mailing list >> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> >> >> http://clug.ca/mailman/__**listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca<http://clug.ca/mailman/__listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca> >> >> <http://clug.ca/mailman/**listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca<http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca> >> > >> Mailing List Guidelines >> (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.**__php<http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.__php> >> <http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.**php<http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php> >> >) >> >> **Please remove these lines when replying >> >> >> >> >> ______________________________**_________________ >> clug-talk mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://clug.ca/mailman/**listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca<http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca> >> Mailing List Guidelines >> (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.**php<http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php> >> ) >> **Please remove these lines when replying >> >> > ______________________________**_________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/**listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca<http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca> > Mailing List Guidelines > (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.**php<http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php> > ) > **Please remove these lines when replying >
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