Mx-23.2 boot failure

[james]

Ok, did that. When I try to log out, it will not let me. I get a dialog box that has the buttons Logout, Restart, ShutDown, Suspend, and a check box to Save Session. I did not have the Save Session checked, and clicked on the Logout button, nothing happened. I waited, and waited and waited. I tried several times. Nothing. I could still access the apps; it was nothing happened. So I checked Save Session, and the apps became inaccessible with a twirling circle like you get when a machine is busy, but still nothing happened. So I created a charlie user and did a reboot. The usual happened (CTRL-ALT-F1) and I logged in as charlie. I found myself in a Vanilla, Out-of-the-box Mx Linux but with 4K screen resolution, so the video drivers were working fine. I am pasting the User Manager Options Tab view, and as you can see still no autologon option. I rebooted again, and logged in as me, and of course, nothing different. But, during the boot, when all the white text is flying by, I saw an orange word "mount' that looked like an error, so when I got back in I searched dmesg and here is what I found (notice that the nvme designation has been shuffled again and is now ONE):

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[    3.160318] FAT-fs (nvme1n1p1): utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FAT filesystems, filesystem will be case sensitive!
[    3.162609] FAT-fs (nvme1n1p1): Volume was not properly unmounted. Some data may be corrupt. Please run fsck.

So, is this something that needs to be addressed, and if so, should I used Disks or gParted or what?
And here is the dialog box showing no autologin:

[Charlie Brown]

Ok. That warning seems to be about the ESP partition (fat32). You can do the check (as you did previously) with GParted (or of course possible via terminal).. however that doesn't seem to be related to this issue.

In fact this was in my mind from the very beginning, just, normally (mostly) it's needed when it doesn't let you login (when there is the gui), that's why I didn't suggest. Now, nothing to lose:

You can delete the .Xauthority file in home , then reboot. However probably this won't work, cause it was the same with the new user, too. Therefore we can directly (rename rather than deleting):

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sudo mv /var/lib/lightdm/.Xauthority{,.old}

Reboot.

[james]

OK, meanwhile I have been thinking about logs. You all probably did too, but anyway, I did a sudo cat /var/log/boot.log and here's what came up (I took out a portion between reboots and prior to using systemd):

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------------ Sat Mar 16 03:33:28 MDT 2024 ------------
rootMX23: clean, 546475/61038592 files, 29848154/244124416 blocks
INIT: version 3.06 booting
INIT: No inittab.d directory found
Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S.
Starting hotplug events dispatcher: systemd-udevd.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (subsystems)...done.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events (devices)...done.
Waiting for /dev to be fully populated...done.
Setting up keyboard layout...done.
Cleaning up temporary files... /tmp.
Checking file systems...done.
Mounting local filesystems...done.
Activating swapfile swap, if any...done.
Cleaning up temporary files....
Starting Setting kernel variables: sysctl.
Configuring network interfaces in background... done.
Starting firewall: ufw...Setting kernel variables (/etc/ufw/sysctl.conf)...done.
Starting RPC port mapper daemon: rpcbind.
Starting NFS common utilities: statd idmapd.
Cleaning up temporary files....
Setting up X socket directories... /tmp/.X11-unix /tmp/.ICE-unix.
Setting up ALSA...done.
Setting sensors limits...done.
Loading kernel modules...done.
INIT: Entering runlevel: 5
Using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel 5.
Starting acpi_fakekey daemon...done.
Starting cgroup management daemon: cgmanager
Setting up console font and keymap...done.
open-vm-tools: not starting as this is not a VMware VM
Starting cgroup management proxy daemon: cgproxy.
Not starting NFS kernel daemon: no exports..
Starting enhanced syslogd: rsyslogd.
haveged: command socket is listening at fd 3
Starting anac(h)ronistic cron: anacron.
Starting ACPI services: acpid.
Starting MD monitoring service: mdadm --monitor.
Starting periodic command scheduler: cron.
Loading cpufreq kernel modules...libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:1998 kmod_module_get_holders: could not open '/sys/module/vboxdrv/holders': No such file or directory
done (acpi-cpufreq).
Starting system message bus: dbus.
Starting bluetooth: bluetoothd.
Starting time daemon: chronyd.
Starting Light Display Manager: lightdm.
CPUFreq Utilities: Setting ondemand CPUFreq governor...CPU0...CPU1...CPU2...CPU3...CPU4...CPU5...CPU6...CPU7...CPU8...CPU9...CPU10...CPU11...CPU12...CPU13...CPU14...CPU15...CPU16...CPU17...CPU18...CPU19...CPU20...CPU21...CPU22...CPU23...done.
Loading VirtualBox kernel modules... vboxdrv vboxnetflt vboxnetadp.
Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon: avahi-daemon.
Starting network connection manager: NetworkManager.
Starting CUPS Bonjour daemon: cups-browsed.
Starting SANE network scanner server: saned.
Starting NetBIOS name server: nmbd.

Nothing in there jumps out at me, but since you all are obviously engineers, does the place where the log ends at "Starting NetBIOS name server: nmbd" give you a clue about the problem? In other words, maybe whatever should come next is the issue? If that is where the boot log normally ends anyway, then would the syslog or kernlog reveal anything?

[Charlie Brown]

Sometimes that (nmbd) takes too long time and makes the boot process longer than normal and can be disabled either on SysV and systemd. (No need when there is no intention to connect to Windows computers)

(Also sometimes smbd and another culprit: NetworkManager-wait-online.service on systemd)...

[james]

OK, I renamed .Xauthority with your code.

I then used gParted to check and repair the boot partition. I got two errors. The first one was pretty scary, until I drilled down to see what the errors were. This doesn't look too bad to me. You?
Then I did a reboot, same result again. But when I logged in, (this is the second time this has happened), I get an error dialog box. This seems to be because when I was logging out and checked the Save Session dialog box, and waited, and waited, and finally just rebooted, it had not finished saving the VirtualBox, so now it tries to restore it but can't. That is a neat feature, if it works, and maybe I just wasn't patient enough after the Log Off button did nothing, but now the question is, how do I delete this saved session so I don't get the error dialog?
So now I am running without an .Xauthority file and I notice no difference.

[james]

One other question. I have done an exhaustive search on Snapshot which I THOUGHT was a back-up/restore tool. There is a lot about how to back up your software, about how to make a Live USB ISO (both of which I did, and which has helped me out), but I have not been able to find ANYTHING on how to restore the snapshot. Is there a way to do that? Because if so, that would solve my problem right away - I made the Snapshot before this problem happened.

[Charlie Brown]

Saved sessions are here in home:

~/.cache/sessions/

Also you can save and delete (other than deleting manually (even the directory, it'll be recreated) ) in "Session and Startup".


You just install the snapshot like installing any distro / official MX iso .

It can be even installed to a different pc with different specs / hardware (just, not 64bit to 32 naturally). Also it won't save/ask/compare how it was before, so you can do everything anew (when installing) (even the partitioning / encryption etc.) no matter how it was previously... just like installing any iso for the first time.

On personal snapshots sometimes there's no "install" icon on desktop (known bug), in that case, open a terminal:

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minstall-launcher

[DukeComposed]

One other question. I have done an exhaustive search on Snapshot which I THOUGHT was a back-up/restore tool.

MX Snapshot is not a backup/restore tool. It just makes snapshots.

Snapshots can be used to make an ISO of a working, customized system & you can use that ISO just like a regular MX install ISO. You could consider this a "restore" option, if you want to wipe your machine and re-install it from not-quite scratch. It's good for cloning one machine onto another. That's not really restoration so much as it is replication.

It's not as good at specific point-in-time, "Where's that file I had last week?" pinpoint restoration. So don't use it for that.

[james]

So, let me get this straight.....
I put in the Live USB Snapshot ISO flashdrive. I boot from it, like I've done here numerous times while trouble-shooting with you. When it comes up, I open a terminal, type "minstall-launcher" and it will let me install OVER the install that is currently on my machine. And this install will include all the apps I installed and the configuration work, icon sizes and colors and themes, and Brave Browser settings I had to tweak and the Virtual Boxes with all their settings, and pan newsreader with all the paths for all the newsgroups, and the VPN configuration, and the appropriate printer drivers, and all the stuff that took me almost a week to do, and if I don't choose to modify it while I'm doing the install, I can have it all back like it was? Because let me telll you something. THAT feature was the thing that finally pushed me over the edge to installing Mx Linux. And I have been unable to find out how to do it. So, is what I just typed in true? It really works like that? I can't tell you how many times restoring a back up has saved me in the past, from viruses, from half-baked software, from disk failures and from configuration issues.
Because if it does that, I have a suggestion for you. The Mx Linux crew should make it clear that it can do that. I used Ghost back in the day, and then Acronis, but if what you have really works, then damn!

[DukeComposed]

And this install will include all the apps I installed and the configuration work, icon sizes and colors and themes, and Brave Browser settings I had to tweak and the Virtual Boxes with all their settings, and pan newsreader with all the paths for all the newsgroups, and the VPN configuration, and the appropriate printer drivers, and all the stuff that took me almost a week to do

Only if you didn't exclude those things when you made the snapshot. If you aren't sure, you just check the ISO and see what's on it. It's not going to put anything onto a disk that isn't in the live session.