I've just run
~ $ sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-guest-x11 -y
and lo and behold, Thunderbird is back; xviewer (stock Mate .pdf viewer)
is back; Chromium is back; Firefox is back; Synaptic is back.
There doesn't seem to have been any need to reinstall the Mate desktop,
in contrast to what the Cinnamon user encountered.
Before purging the virtualbox application, I tried launching
Thunderbird, without success (as expected). I checked dmesg | tail and
the last line read
[ 65.207994] thunderbird[2835]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f4917c065f5
sp 00007ffd2f4a3378 error 6 in libxul.so[7f4915573000+4409000]
All very mysterious to me, but perhaps useful to the Mint people for
troubleshooting?
Anyway thank you once again. /Andrew
On 28/03/18 13:21, Graham Furniss wrote:
This may be un-related, but the symptoms appear similar.
Had an issue yesterday with a machine where attempting to log in got a dialog box which
began "session only lasted less than 10 seconds /com/ubuntu/upstart:..." . Full
error looked something like:
initctl: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket
/com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
syndaemon: no process found
/etc/mdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
localuser:raskolnikov being added to access control list
Turned out to be virtualbox-guest-x11 which had got installed as part of an
update and was stuffing up cinnamon.
Removed it, forced a re-install of cinnamon and then a reboot and it was all
fixed.
Lots of references on Google such as:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/346136/linux-mint-18-64-bit-session-failed
This is interesting as immediately before this, the user had issues with a
whole lot of applications not starting, some of them the same as yours.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
_______________________________________________________________________________
Graham Furniss
Computer/Electronics Technician
Department of Chemical and Process Engineering
College of Engineering
University of Canterbury
Phone +64 3 369 3616 or Extn 93616 on campus
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
[email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, 28 March 2018 12:56 p.m.
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Linux-users] Mint 18: suddenly multiple applications don't launch
Yesterday on boot up and numerous reboots, Mint 18 Mate confronted me with something
I've never seen before. A few icons had disappeared from the dock (network,
update). Multiple applications that I use every day refused to launch. They gave no
error messages. Trying to launch from the GUI, the "Starting (name of
application) bar would appear on the panel, then after a few seconds, nothing.
Trying to launch from the terminal, nothing, even appending -v or -vv to the
command. I tried running as root via sudo, same result.
The non functioning applications included Firefox, Chromium, Thunderbird, the
network manager when called from Settings, the PDF viewer (whether invoked from
the menu or by double-clicking a .pdf document's icon), and Synaptic.
Applications that seemed to be working normally included the Caja file manager,
the display manager, Moneydance, the terminal and, as I then discovered,
apt-get.
With respect to each of the nonfunctioning applications for which I tried
apt-get install, apt-get told me it was already installed and at the latest
version.
I was able to install Midori and xpdf, and they both worked. When I then tried
removing and reinstalling Thunderbird, though, it did remove and reinstall but
it still wouldn't launch. Thunderbird's data files seem mostly OK, although
one or two of the mail sub folders may be duplicated.
I have a quite up to date backup of my home folder, so if I have to reinstall
the OS it's a nuisance rather than a tragedy, but is there any other way
forward anyone can recommend?
TIA - Andrew
Sent from my iPad
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Marian Ganzeveld & Andrew Packer
5575 Croisilles-French Pass Road
RD3 French Pass 7193
New Zealand
+64 3 744 3128
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