"Failed to start session" after interrupted upgrade to 14.04

Question

While upgrading to 14.04 using sudo do-release-upgrade my network connection was interrupted and several packages failed to upgrade.

Running do-release-upgrade again reported No new releases found but apt-get listed many packages "kept back", so it seemed the system was in an intermediate state. I ran apt-get dist-upgrade which installed those packages again, then apt-get autoremove after which apt seemed happy.

However, after restarting I cannot log in at the GUI prompt. After entering my password the error "Failed to start session" appears in red. I am still able to log in from the command prompt, but I don't know what to do to solve or debug the GUI log in failure.

@Elliott, try Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get a shell login prompt. Then you use Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get back to the GUI. — Ian Mackinnon, Apr 21 '14 at 11:01
This worked for me sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-session — Aravinda, May 02 '15 at 03:14

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 19 '14 at 14:46

15

After issuing the following command I was able to log in again:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

I had previously removed update-notifier which caused some other packages to be removed, some of which it seems were necessary to successfully perform the distribution upgrade.

answered Apr 19 '14 at 14:46

Ian Mackinnon

1,272

1

running this command gave me a message to run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' and this got me back on track thanks – Aaron Williams Oct 08 '14 at 00:09
Still doesn't work – Nathan B Feb 25 '22 at 19:59

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 23 '14 at 20:52

2

For me the answer was in my /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf - I'd been running my 12.04 LTS in ubuntu-2d mode, had to revert back to just ubuntu and that fixed the issue

answered Apr 23 '14 at 20:52

Russ Lowenthal

571

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 19 '14 at 12:35

0

Run a

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -a

to reconfigure your packages. Hopefully it will work. (At least for me it worked with several issued)

answered Apr 19 '14 at 12:35

sboda

512

I have just tried this but the problem persists, unfortunately. – Ian Mackinnon Apr 19 '14 at 14:24
1

Note, -a is no longer an option for dpkg-reconfigure, at least as of Ubuntu 16.04 – CJBrew Dec 12 '16 at 13:32
The '-a' option was removed due to too many bugs that resulted from it: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debconf/+bug/1463672 – naisanza Mar 28 '17 at 19:10

"Failed to start session" after interrupted upgrade to 14.04

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