I have a clean 14.04 Ubuntu installation on a dell precision T5400 with a NVIDIA card. The system is updated and upgraded. When the system locks after 5 minutes, the system does not show the login with password screen. But I can still ses the windows of the apps I had open before the lock. I can actually move the mouse pointer to the left and see the hide/unhide animation for the tool bar. If a plug a usb stick I can see a new nautilus window. I can restart the desktop by restarting the lightdm process, but I loose all the windows and process I had open of course.
Any ideas how to debug this problem? somebody has a solution?
Best regards,
After looking at the "syslog" (after a recommendation from Simptnon) I discovered that the gnome session stops with "Fatal IO error 11"
May 5 11:24:34 slozano-01 kernel: [233478.298064] usb 1-5.3: USB disconnect, device number 9
May 5 11:24:34 slozano-01 colord: device removed: sysfs-(null)
May 5 11:24:34 slozano-01 colord: device removed: sysfs-samsung-Galaxy_Nexus
May 5 11:29:33 slozano-01 kernel: [233776.995035] nouveau E[compiz[4535]] fail ttm_validate
May 5 11:29:33 slozano-01 kernel: [233776.995043] nouveau E[compiz[4535]] validate vram_list
May 5 11:29:33 slozano-01 kernel: [233776.995100] nouveau E[compiz[4535]] validate: -12
May 5 11:29:33 slozano-01 kernel: [233777.254919] nouveau E[compiz[4535]] fail ttm_validate
May 5 11:29:33 slozano-01 kernel: [233777.254927] nouveau E[compiz[4535]] validate vram_list
May 5 11:29:33 slozano-01 kernel: [233777.254982] nouveau E[compiz[4535]] validate: -12
May 5 11:43:18 slozano-01 colord: device removed: xrandr-Dell Inc.-DELL 2009W-KM50984O435L
May 5 11:43:18 slozano-01 colord: device removed: xrandr-Dell Inc.-DELL 2009W-KM50984O448L
May 5 11:43:18 slozano-01 colord: Profile removed: icc-dc7cf53b156187281507a2bdfcabad3c
May 5 11:43:18 slozano-01 colord: Profile removed: icc-d09afdda29e099d929b13d54c0f5e976
May 5 11:43:18 slozano-01 gnome-session[4340]: Gdk-WARNING: gnome-session: Fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server :0.#012
This maybe is related to bug: "https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers/+bug/999191". I will remove the nvidia drivers from the system and see if that solves the problem.
Best Answer
If you can't get in to a terminal then you could use:
If you're runningnautilus
you can restart a session by:You should first get the process ID of the failed session (gnome-shell/nautilus):
Will return something like the following (perhaps lesser processes):
Now you need to find the failed process:
gnome-shell
would usually be running/usr/bin/gnome-shell
; ORnautilus
would usually be running/usr/bin/naultilus
;Example:
With the example above the process ID is 2698 - Now we're going to "gracefully restart" this process by sending a hang-up signal known as a
HUP
with the following command:Conclusion
When I say "gracefully restart" - A hangup signal simply send a signal to the parent process. The phrase graceful(ly) essentially waits until the process has finished before sending the signal. So you're not actually restarting the process.