Stuck at login screen, updating to 16.04

[kew11424]

I have LinuxLite on an old Asus P5KPRO in the garage. This normally runs XP, but occasionally I boot Linux instead for various reasons. XP is on one HDD, Linux on another. I use grub to choose which system to boot, the default is XP.

The Software Updater said I was still running Ubuntu 14.04 and I stupidly let it update to 16.04 yesterday. All seemed to go well with the update, took about an hour to download and install. But when I try logging in at the lightdm greeter, it hangs. I type in my password, the screen moves up slightly to make room for the "logging in" message and then... nothing. Eventually the screen goes dark as the screensaver kicks in, I suppose.

I can log in to a terminal session with ctrl-alt-F1, and use startx to get to the desktop. I've tried a few things: remove (purge) and re-install lightdm, remove/reinstall Nvidia drivers, chown .Xauthority. Any other suggestions? TIA.

Incidentally, grub now has "*Description Linux 2.8" as the first entry (above XP), and if I try to change this, grub customizer is missing. Trying to reinstall it tells me I have a broken installation. I doubt this has anything to do with the login problem, but I'll have to change the default back to XP eventually.

[valtam]

Which Software Updater are you referring to? We don't ship a Software Updater with Linux Lite, so if you have installed one, this could be the cause of your problem.

[gold_finger]

Sounds like somewhere along the line you installed either the Ubuntu automatic updater, or the Ubuntu Software Center (which probably pulled in the Ubuntu updater with it) to your LL installation.  Neither of those are compatible with LL -- they eventually cause this very issue.


Best bet is to save any important data in the LL install to an external source, then re-install version you had on there before, or test out newer version and install that if it works fine on the computer.

[kew11424]

Yeah, looks like that'll be the quickest way to resolve it. Will probably save a lot of fiddling about in the long run, if there's no simple quick fix.