I have the same problem. All I can say at the moment is that slim+fvwm work for me as a stop-gap solution. I suspect the problem has to do with infinality (or with fonts, at any rate), but I can't be any more specific. Anyway, here's what "worked for me": (1) During the boot sequence, before gdm hangs, switch to a tty<#n> via ctrl-alt-F<#n> (2) Login as root (3) Disable gdm (#> systemctl disable gdm.service) (4) Enable slim (#> systemctl enable slim.service) (5) In ~/.xinitrc replace "exec gnome-session" with "exec fvwm" There are a few obvious alternatives available, such as booting from another media, mounting the filesystem and then doing (3) - (5) manually, possibly with different login/window managers. Cheers, T. On Tue, 2013-04-23 at 13:54 +1000, Dean Thomson wrote:

Probably best bet is to post this in the forum with any relevent systemd logs.

On 23/04/13 13:53, Magnus Therning wrote:

...

Hi,

I performed a large-ish update yesterday, gnome 3.8, linux kernel and a few other bits and bobs, which left my computer in an unbootable state. I still haven't any more details on why since I've left my other boot option at work. All I see is that the kernel boots and systemd is started but never progresses to a login prompt or GDM. I also don't get any of the virtual terminals.

Maybe this is enough for someone to point me in a direction for solving it. If it isn't ill get back with more details this evening when I have some other mean of booting the system.

/M

I think the problem is caused by Intel graphic driver does not play well with mesa which Gnome is depended on. Before that gets fixed, what you can do is at the bootloader, edit the kernel parameters. Append systemd.unit=multi-user.target to your kernel line. This will boot you to tty instead of GDM. So then log in as root, disable GDM, install another login manager such as lxdm, slim etc. Then enable it, reboot. The problem should be solved. On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 8:24 AM, Magnus Therning wrote:

On Apr 23, 2013 7:40 AM, "Tomasz Kowalski" wrote:

...

I have the same problem. All I can say at the moment is that slim+fvwm work for me as a stop-gap solution. I suspect the problem has to do with infinality (or with fonts, at any rate), but I can't be any more specific. Anyway, here's what "worked for me": (1) During the boot sequence, before gdm hangs, switch to a tty<#n> via

No, this won't work for me, unfortunately. I don't get to GDM, in fact I don't even get to a point where I have any tty to switch to :-(

I'll see if I can get some logs out once I have another way to boot.

...

ctrl-alt-F<#n> (2) Login as root (3) Disable gdm (#> systemctl disable gdm.service) (4) Enable slim (#> systemctl enable slim.service) (5) In ~/.xinitrc replace "exec gnome-session" with "exec fvwm"

There are a few obvious alternatives available, such as booting from another media, mounting the filesystem and then doing (3) - (5) manually, possibly with different login/window managers.

Cheers,

T.

On Tue, 2013-04-23 at 13:54 +1000, Dean Thomson wrote:

...

Probably best bet is to post this in the forum with any relevent systemd logs.

On 23/04/13 13:53, Magnus Therning wrote:

...

Hi,

I performed a large-ish update yesterday, gnome 3.8, linux kernel and a few other bits and bobs, which left my computer in an unbootable state. I still haven't any more details on why since I've left my other boot option at work. All I see is that the kernel boots and systemd is started but never progresses to a login prompt or GDM. I also don't get any of the virtual terminals.

Maybe this is enough for someone to point me in a direction for solving it. If it isn't ill get back with more details this evening when I have some other mean of booting the system.

/M

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 9:56 AM, Magnus Therning wrote:

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Tianyi Wang wrote:

...

I think the problem is caused by Intel graphic driver does not play well with mesa which Gnome is depended on.

Before that gets fixed, what you can do is at the bootloader, edit the kernel parameters. Append systemd.unit=multi-user.target to your kernel line. This will boot you to tty instead of GDM. So then log in as root, disable GDM, install another login manager such as lxdm, slim etc. Then enable it, reboot. The problem should be solved.

Interesting, that could very well be it. You don't happen to link to a bug report that I can take a look at and follow for updates?

Another issue I noticed at the same time, and I don't know when this happened really, is that I don't seem to have a fully functional keyboard in my grub menu. Arrow keys and enter works fine, but there is no effect when pressing 'e' or 'c'. I haven't noticed any issues with the keyboard earlier when the booting succeeded. As mentioned earlier, I'll have to research this in more detail.

/M

-- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4 email: magnus@therning.org jabber: magnus@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus

There are many bug reports about this issue on https://bugs.archlinux.org Tbh, before GNOME 3.8 got moved to stable repo, someone posted this bug on the mailing list, but it still got moved to stable without any warnings on the website.

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Tianyi Wang wrote:

There are many bug reports about this issue on https://bugs.archlinux.org

Tbh, before GNOME 3.8 got moved to stable repo, someone posted this bug on the mailing list, but it still got moved to stable without any warnings on the website.

Hmm, the one JoKoT3 mentions, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=161964, doesn't sound like my issue at all. As I've mentioned a few times now, my system hangs before I get to GDM. The last thing that appears on the terminal are a few messages from systemd (nothing about any errors) and then everything just freezes, no reaction to any key presses at all. /M -- Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4 email: magnus@therning.org jabber: magnus@therning.org twitter: magthe http://therning.org/magnus