Subject: Re: bug#78495: gnome shell not launching...?

From: Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2025 11:46:04 +0900

Hi Christopher,

Christopher Howard <[email-masked]> writes:

> On this computer, I use gnome-desktop-environment. Last Friday I
> attempted a system reconfigure. GDM comes up as expected, and I am
> able to login. But instead of getting Gnome Shell, I just get an empty
> X display with a cursor and nothing to click on. The usual Gnome Shell
> keyboard shortcuts like Alt-F2 do not do anything.
>
> I adjusted my config file to use a version 5 linux-libre, and
> reconfigured, but I got the same results after a reboot.
>
> This computer is not the latest and greatest model, but I think it
> should be new enough not to have problems running Gnome Shell.
>
> Pleased see attached log files and config file, which hopefully are helpful.

That's the same issue reported earlier, right?  Did you try your config
in a VM ?

I just tried running a VM produced with 'guix system vm
~/src/guix/gnu/system/examples/desktop.tmpl', and then issuing:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
/gnu/store/x03nwvky3lil1qn9a5gxhazy3qzrmhwb-run-vm.sh -m 4G
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

And it works (it defaults to Wayland), but it's slow because of the lack
of hardware acceleration.

To try with GNOME Boxes, which will configure hardware acceleration by
default, I generated a disk image with:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
guix system image --image-type=efi-raw ~/src/guix/gnu/system/examples/desktop.tmpl
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Which gave me a gigantic 9 GiB file, which I copied e.g. to:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
cp /gnu/store/qpfzrzzhajiv5gwd8fmicw60y253i7zj-disk-image \
   /scratch/virtual-machines/gnome-boxes/images/gnome-uefi.raw
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

And loaded up in GNOME Boxes (installing from a file).  To make sure you
can select a UEFI bootloader in GNOME Boxes, you need very recent
libosinfo data, so run this first:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
guix shell osinfo-db-tools -- osinfo-db-import --user --nightly
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I hope this helps troubleshooting on your side.  Make sure to use the
desktop.tmpl template to avoid any other problems that may be only
apparent from your own config at first, and do try Wayland as X11
support is being removed from GNOME anyway.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim