I was on snapshot 20180425, ran zypper dup to snapshot 20180511. LightDM loads properly; when I log in, however, I get only the IceWM desktop, and a message indicating that Cinnamon has crashed.
I used Yast to lock down files in the new snapshot that seemed to be Cinnamon related, specifically:
… but this had no effect. Neither did a change from the 396.18 to 396.24 nvidia driver, both installed ‘the hard way.’
I readily admit that troubleshooting this problem may be over my head. I don’t understand what files and libraries are required to make the Cinnamon desktop function, don’t know if I should be locking down other files, or patterns, or taking other troubleshooting steps.
I managed to fix this one myself, although I think something isn’t kosher with what zypper dup wanted to put on my computer, and/or with a necessary package upgrade that zypper dup might have left out of the mix.
With this file list in hand, I killed the VM, returned to the misbehaving computer in question, and locked down all of the packages named in Yast. Zypper dup complained about dependencies, so I locked some additional files, too:
Zypper dup followed by a ‘hard way’ installation of the nvidia 396.24 driver now brought up a working Cinnamon desktop. I am computing successfully again, but will still be grateful for any insight on what went wrong. I’ve never before had to lock down packages to make zypper dup work.
Is there a special reason for using another build of “tar”, and what is repository #7 ?
> zypper lr -Ed
I locked some additional files
All this locking is unexplained.
> zypper ll
If you restrict yourself to repositories 1, 2 and 8, selecting the package “cinnamon” in YaST – Software Management should add everything else required.
We have cross-posted. I think that you have to be careful that KDE:Extra is not introducing a dependency on an older version of something that is blocking upgrading a cinnamon component.
Thanks for the feedback, Ray. Repository #7, KDE:/Extra , allowed me to install Recoll text search. I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by “another build of tar.”
If you restrict yourself to repositories 1, 2 and 8, selecting the package “cinnamon” in YaST – Software Management should add everything else required.
I could use Yast to disable all repositories other than 1, 2 and 8, kill the locks and run zypper dup again. Is that what you’re suggesting here? It sounds promising, but I thought I should check first before trying it.
FWIW: The list of enabled repositories above hasn’t changed for about six months. I have run zypper dups after nearly every new snapshot in that period without past problems related to Cinnamon. However, I did run into a similar problem when I tried to switch from nvidia ‘the hard way’ to the openSUSE nvidia repositories. IceWM came up, and nothing more. I didn’t try to troubleshoot, simply returned to the ‘hard way’ install.
I just zypper dup’d Tumbleweed on a Dell Precision 7710 with an NVidia Quadro M3000M graphics card, also running the Cinnamon desktop, same repositories and with a ‘hard way’ install of the Nvidia 396.24 driver. Same symptoms: Cinnamon crash on log-in, fall-back to IceWM.
The reason that Cinnamon crashes is that some parts of it got updated to version 3.8 and some parts remained at version 3.6. The issue is known and has been bugged: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1091701.
The fix for this bug is blocked by two other bug-reports that are waiting for clearance from the openSUSE security team. It might take a while to get resolved as the security team reported that they have a big backlog of security review.
At this point, the only three known workarounds are:
Install all Cinnamon 3.8 packages using the X11:Cinnamon:Current OBS repository. You can find instructions in the above mentioned bug report.
Don’t update Tumbleweed until the above mentioned bug is resolved.
Switch to a different desktop environment until the above mentioned bug is resolved.
It is an unfortunate situation as it affects all Tumbleweed Cinnamon users. Hopefully it will be resolved shortly.
Thank you, kruizer23! At long last, after hours of troubleshooting, the solution! You have made my day, or at least the part of the day involved with computer configuration.
I suggest that those suffering Cinnamon ills read the above-linked bug report, but for those who want an abbreviated Readers’ Digest version, here’s what I did after reading kruizer23’s post: