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Login screen crashes after Edgy Eft upgrade (solution)

Automated disclaimer: This post was written more than 15 years ago and I may not have looked at it since.

Older posts may not align with who I am today and how I would think or write, and may have been written in reaction to a cultural context that no longer applies. Some of my high school or college posts are just embarrassing. However, I have left them public because I believe in keeping old web pages alive—and it's interesting to see how I've changed.

After upgrading Ubuntu Linux from Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft, I found that the login screen would malfunction with the message "The greeter application appears to be crashing. Attempting to use a different one." A different login screen would appear (which worked just fine), but it was still irritating.

Problem
Ubuntu login greeter crashes with message "The greeter application appears to be crashing. Attempting to use a different one."
Solution

Turn off the accessible greeter.

  1. Select System -> Administration -> Login Window
  2. Go to the tab "Accessiblity"
  3. Uncheck "Enable accessible login"
Explanation
It seems that the accessible login broke in Edgy Eft.
Resources

Responses: 6 so far Feed icon

  1. #11415 | Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 21:51 (EST)

    Jonathan Harker says:

    I have the same problem, but this solution does not fix it. I have posted to launchpad about it. Just thought you might want to know... I suspect I have a horrid problem with ATI hardware and fglrx drivers.

  2. #11446 | Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 01:06 (EST)

    Tim McCormack says:

    Interesting. Thanks for posting here!

  3. #12471 | Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 07:31 (EST)

    Alex says:

    I cannot even open the "Login Window", so how to fix this?!? Same story - updating the Edgy messed-it up...

  4. #12487 | Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 09:27 (EST)

    Tim McCormack says:

    @Alex: On my system, I was given a different login screen to use after the first one crashed. Yours isn't doing that?

    You may have to find out where that preference is stored on your system, and edit it from the command line.

  5. #12867 | Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 12:51 (EST)

    Alex says:

    Tim, I cannot open the System - Administration - Login Window. I click and nothing happens. The login when I start the computer works, after I get the error message, just like described by others. But to change the setting in Login Window, I need to open it, which I cannot, hence I am bound to get the error each time I start the computer...

  6. #12872 | Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 13:24 (EST)

    Tim McCormack says:

    @Alex: With Edgy Eft, I sometimes can't get into administrative windows too soon after returning from standby -- it has something to do with gksu. What happens if you execute "gksu gdmsetup" (the menu command itself) from the command line? (Try it twice, and if that doesn't work, try "sudo gdmsetup" instead.)

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