BBBW and X desktop

[Stephane Charette]

My BBBW was working correctly when I received it a few days ago.  Maybe I should I have stopped there.  :)

Wanting to use the newest build, I downloaded and installed this build:  https://rcn-ee.com/rootfs/bb.org/testing/2016-12-18/lxqt-4gb/BBBW-blank-debian-8.6-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-12-18-4gb.img.xz

Now it still boots, I can login to the debug serial console and poke around as usual.  But I'm no longer getting the graphical LXQT desktop on the micro HDMI.  Just a black screen with a flashing text mode cursor in the top left.

Before I dig further, I wanted to confirm I'm using the correct build.  Should the build I quoted above resulted in a graphical desktop once installed on a BBBW device?

Stéphane

[Stephane Charette]

[I'm using] this build:  https://rcn-ee.com/rootfs/bb.org/testing/2016-12-18/lxqt-4gb/BBBW-blank-debian-8.6-lxqt-4gb-armhf-2016-12-18-4gb.img.xz

When the BBBW boots up, I see this message on the serial console:

[FAILED] Failed to start Light Display Manager.

See 'systemctl status lightdm.service' for details.

If it matters, my hookup is like this:   BBBW -> micro HDMI -> HDMI-to-DVI-adapter -> DVI to old DELL flat screen display.

When I run "systemctl status lightdm.service", part of what I see is this:

Dec 23 00:39:16 beaglebone systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Start request repeated too quickly.

Dec 23 00:39:16 beaglebone systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.

Dec 23 00:39:16 beaglebone systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Unit entered failed state.

Dec 23 00:39:16 beaglebone systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result 'start-limit-hit'.

If I wait a minute or so and then manually run the command "sudo systemctl start lightdm" then the desktop starts fine.

After poking around, I found a solution.  Turns out the default pause between retries for systemd to restart a service is 100ms, and it only retries a maximum of 5 times within 10 seconds before it gives up forever.  So I added the following lines to /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service:

RestartSec=5s

TimeoutSec=60s

StartLimitInterval=5min

StartLimitBurst=60

With this, the X desktop now starts up every time on my BBBW.

Robert, is the file /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service something that we control, or does it come from an upstream source?  Can we easily make modifications to it to increase the length between restarts, and increase the number of times systemd tries to restart it?

Stéphane

[Robert Nelson]

Nice!!

I've been doing a evil hack for lcd's:

https://github.com/RobertCNelson/boot-scripts/blob/master/boot/am335x_evm.sh#L449-L460

but i like your setup better..

/etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service is a symlink too:

/lib/systemd/system/lightdm.service

I'll just patch lightdm and push it out:

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/lightdm

Regards,

--
Robert Nelson
https://rcn-ee.com/

[Robert Nelson]

and pushed out to the repo..

That works so much nicer then my race hack!

sudo apt update ; sudo apt upgrade