Package: systemd-shim Version: 10-3 Severity: important Affects: gdm3 Hi,
I admit I didn't spend much time investigating this issue (I need a working Sid box), but from past experience, I guess it comes from a new systemd-shim incompatibility introduced by some change in systemd-logind (or GDM, but IMHO it's less unlikely than systemd). The symptoms are identical to #801749 (but since people there mention journalctl, I guess they were not using SysV init, so it can't be a duplicate of this bug): GDM doesn't start (the screen keeps displaying the console, with the cursor blinking frenetically), and syslog shows lots and lots of "gdm3: Child process XYZ was already dead." and "gdm3: Unable to kill session worker process". lightdm (under SysV init) does start normally. Switching the init system to systemd gets rid of the problem, and allows GDM to start normally (this is why I'm filing this report against systemd-shim). Please note that I didn't try to downgrade systemd or GDM to find the exact culprit (or the version introducing the change), I made an educated guess and switched the init system directly, which worked. I have a lot of stuff to do on my Sid box ATM and I can't afford the time. Please also note that I don't reboot this box very often, so the incompatibility may have been introduced by a systemd update a long time ago, not necessarily the latest one. Regards, -- Raphaël Halimi