[xivlo] GNOME troubleshooting
2020-01-08


Sometimes /home just won't mount.
Symptoms on our school computers manifest as follows:
 when you try to log in with a valid password, the screen flashes and you're back in gdm with no error message.

Here's what to do in that case.

1. Switch to a different TTY.
 Press CTRL+ALT+F[x] where x is the TTY number. F-keys are above number keys, if you haven't noticed.
2. Log in.
3. Set up your home directory in the /tmp
 $ mkdir -p /tmp/home/`whoami`
 $ cd /tmp/home/`whoami`
 $ export HOME=`pwd`
This is important, because gnome can't run without a writeable home dir.
That's why your session doesn't work.
Thankfully you can always write to /tmp
4. Start gnome-session on wayland.
 $ XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session gnome-session

When you're done:
5. Log out from gnome. You'll be back in TTY.
6. Clear out your changes in /tmp
 $ rm -r /tmp/home
7. Log out normally and switch off the computer.
 logout
 *press the power button once*

Simple enough.