[Pkg-xfce-devel] Debian testing installs with XDM as dependency of Xfce fail (eventually) when switched to LightDM

[Gilbert Sullivan]

On 09/12/2011 09:09 AM, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> On lun., 2011-09-12 at 09:07 -0400, Gilbert Sullivan wrote:
>> I'm afraid I'm not certain what you mean by "timing information", but
>> I'll try to provide something useful.
>>
> Only some information about logs timing. I don't know where the failing
> attempts were done, so I can't do anything from the logs.

Okay, I had the system hard lock on me today -- while running under XDM. 
The difference is that XDM still allows me (after hard shutdown and 
restart) to log back on.

So, I suppose this means that LightDM is in no way implicated in the 
lockups. It is merely a victim of them, though why it fails to let me 
log back on to the profile after a lockup isn't clear to me.

XDM has no problem with me logging back on after such an excursion.

I did collect syslog, dmesg, .xsession-errors, and xdm.log immediately 
after the restart. But I'm at a loss to see what's going on from these 
logs. The xdm.log, in particular, seems to be devoid of any mention of 
trouble.

I'm not sure where to go from here, but I strongly suspect that my 
problem has something to do with the usb subsystem. (I hope it isn't an 
actual hardware failure on this few-week-old Lenovo notebook.)

When I've encountered these lockups before, it has generally been at the 
end of a long session / end of the day when I'm backing up my data to an 
external flash drive and an external hard drive -- both usb-connected.

When the system locked up today I had just issued lsusb to see if I 
could get the external drives re-listed so that I could mount them with 
pmount. The Western Digital passport HD has a tendency to go to "sleep" 
whether it is mounted or not. If I can get it relisted when issuing the 
command ls -l /dev/disk/by-label, then I can remount it and use it for 
backups. Otherwise, I have to reboot the system to use the drive.

This WD drive had gone to sleep during the session today, and I had 
already used lsusb to get it re-recognized by the system. It had been 
/dev/sdb1 first thing in the morning, and then listed as /dev/sdd1 and 
remounted again later in the day. When I tried to use lsusb a third time 
to get it recognized, the system locked.

So, this is a problem FOR LightDM, in that LightDM has never allowed me 
to log back in to my account following one of these failures. But 
LightDM is the victim, and not the villain -- obviously.

I really thank you for your patience and help. If you can suggest what I 
should do from this point forward, I'd really appreciate it. I'm just a 
hobbyist, and I'd like to provide useful information to the concerned 
developers if possible.

Best regards,
Gilbert