<p dir="ltr">I run Debian testing on my laptop. It was OK until I ran aptitude update and then aptitude upgrade, and then a reboot.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Now, the system boots into the normal gnome login screen. I login as my normal user, the background comes up, the disk light flashes as expected, then I get an error message on a black screen -</p>
<p dir="ltr">Oh no, something has gone wrong!<br>
A problem has occurred, and the system cannot recover. All extensions have been disabled as a precaution.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Then, a dialog pops up with an OK button, which says:<br>
No system tray detected on this system. <br>
Unable to start, exiting.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I click OK, the system reverts back to the login screen.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I can access a shell prompt with ctrl-f2. Dmesg does not show any errors. I tried adding a new user, rebooting, and logging in as the new user, but I get the same error messages.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Googling the errors "debian missing system tray" did not yield much in the way of help. Googling "Oh no..." led me to looking at the errors from startx. I ran startx from the command line and wrote the errors to a file. I got the following:</p>
<p dir="ltr">X.Org X Server 1.12.4<br>
Release Date: 2012-08-27<br>
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0<br>
Build Operating System: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 x86_64 Debian<br>
Current Operating System: Linux orca 3.1.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Tue Jan 10 05:01:58 UTC 2012 x86_64<br>
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.1.0-1-amd64 root=UUID=7870a6c9-642b-4b15-b0cd-3f01d27<br>
d450e ro quiet<br>
Build Date: 17 April 2013 10:22:47AM<br>
xorg-server 2:1.12.4-6 (Julien Cristau <<a href="mailto:jcristau@debian.org">jcristau@debian.org</a>>)<br>
Current version of pixman: 0.26.0<br>
Before reporting problems, check <a href="http://wiki.x.org">http://wiki.x.org</a><br>
to make sure that you have the latest version.<br>
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,<br>
(++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,<br>
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.<br>
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.1.log", Time: Sun Jun 30 17:34:20 2013<br>
(==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"<br>
libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod.c:505 kmod_lookup_alias_from_builtin_file: could not open builtin f<br>
ile '/lib/modules/3.1.0-1-amd64/modules.builtin.bin'<br>
FATAL: Module fbcon not found.<br>
The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:<br>
> Warning: Compat map for group 2 redefined<br>
> Using new definition<br>
> Warning: Compat map for group 3 redefined<br>
> Using new definition<br>
> Warning: Compat map for group 4 redefined<br>
> Using new definition<br>
Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server<br>
The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:<br>
> Warning: Compat map for group 2 redefined<br>
> Using new definition<br>
> Warning: Compat map for group 3 redefined<br>
> Using new definition<br>
> Warning: Compat map for group 4 redefined<br>
> Using new definition<br>
Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server<br>
xinit: connection to X server lost<br>
<br>
waiting for X server to shut down Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It seems the fbcon error is a red herring....fbcon was moved into the kernel and the error message has not been fixed: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=588560">http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=588560</a></p>
<p dir="ltr">My /lib/modules/3.1.0-1-amd64/modules.builtin.bin has zero length. According to this bug report (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=668568">http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=668568</a>) the modules.builtin.bin is not used until 3.2.1-1, so I am lost at this point.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Any suggestions on how to diagnose/fix this problem would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p dir="ltr">Mark<br>
</p>