[SOLVED] Upgrade to Buster Debian 10 Broke Login GUI

[stevedude]

I received a notification to upgrade with the MX Updater, I provided the password and the upgrade commenced.

Enclosed are pics of my inxi:




I've been using MX Linux for almost a year now, but this is the first major upgrade I've had so I am not really sure what happened. The upgrade seemed to go well, but it left me at the TTY terminal screen that I can log into.

I typically use NVidia proprietary drivers.

This is what I have done do far:

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sudo apt --fix-broken install

This seemed to try to reinstall some packages. The output was scrolling pretty fast, but I did see this error: "Unable to initialize frontend: Gnome

I also use lightdm as my login screen

That's all I have - Hopefully its enough to get the ball rolling. If there are tips that involve editing files, please include instructions on how to do that. I typically am used to a gui text editor.

Thanks in advance

[manyroads]

Debian10 is not available on MX or antiX yet. It was not in any update.

[teddyk67]

I only had 3 updates, none of them related to Debian 10.

I think the OP activated some kind of Buster repo and downloaded updates pertaining to Buster.

[manyroads]

I only had 3 updates, none of them related to Debian 10.

I think the OP activated some kind of Buster repo and downloaded updates pertaining to Buster.

Well... then... I guess he "gets to keep all the pieces".

[JayM]

@stevedude, can you run inxi -r and post a picture of the results? Also, var/log/apt/history.log?

The only recent updates that I've received in the past few days are for mx-packageinstaller, mx-installer, palemoon and mx-snapshot, none of which have anything to do with logging in or starting lightdm or X11. However, I don't know if there were any nvidia-related updates as I have a radeon gpu.

[fehlix]

I received a notification to upgrade with the MX Updater, I provided the password and the upgrade commenced.

Would this provide any output:

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cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list | grep debian | grep stable

If yes, apt might have buster updates installed, which might not work in stretch based MX 18.
EDIT: Because buster is now stable since July 7th 2019.

[stevedude]

Last post for this evening - Will post other requests tomorrow, but this is what I am looking at: 1,950 Updates [refer to pic below]



Mx Updater readout:

https://pastebin.com/raw/tzTnQzds

[JayM]

Last post for this evening - Will post other requests tomorrow, but this is what I am looking at: 1,950 Updates [refer to pic below]



Mx Updater readout:

https://pastebin.com/raw/tzTnQzds

Yep, that's what happened. You've somehow enabled the Debian Stable repos rather than Debian Stretch, and when Buster was released yesterday as the new stable branch of Debian it updated everything with Buster packages and prompted autoremoving your Stretch packages, breaking your system. See this post in another, related, thread for more information:
viewtopic.php?p=513818#p513818
At this point you can either boot from a live USB and restore your system from a backup or snapshot made prior to yesterday then fix your repositories, or reinstall from scratch. You can tell the installer to reuse your existing home partition to preserve your data and settings.

Here's what the results from inxi -r should look like (your mirrors may vary):

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Repos:     Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/antix.list 
           1: deb https://mirror.pregi.net/mx-linux-packages/antix/stretch/ stretch main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://mirror.pregi.net/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://mirror.pregi.net/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb https://mirror.pregi.net/mx-linux-packages/mx/repo/ stretch main non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 

Notice that they all say "stretch", not "stable"? The MX devs made them that way on purpose to avoid these kinds of issues whenever Debian releases a new stable version and before MX has updated its version to the new stable, like now.

Protip: whenever you see a huge upgrade like that, hold off running it until you've double-checked your repository settings in MX Repo Manager, especially on the third tab, to make sure you haven't permanently enabled anything that shouldn't be, and if not I'd ask about it in the forum and/or create a snapshot and burn the iso to a USB before allowing the upgrade to run. I did that on my system once when I first began using MX and didn't know any better and had permanently enabled the MX Test repo. There was a huge update and I let it run. Fortunately it didn't break my installation, but IIRC I went ahead and reinstalled MX because I didn't trust it not to cause problems in the future.

[Gerson]

And what is the eagerness to upgrade to Debian 10? For now MX works well and the developers are already working on it to offer a stable and solid distribution until now. The old saying: "If something works well, leave it as it is."

[rasat]

To upgrade stretch to buster, is to reinstall packages which are removed in the process, BEFORE logout. In the upgrade systemd-shim, lightdm, network-manager, synaptic, etc. are removed. It breaks whole system. Don't feel bad, this what I also did last January. In my next round of upgrade, success. :)

Next time, first check or ask in forum.