Desktop not starting after Centos upgrade

Question

I upgraded a server from centos 6.5 (with gnome2) to 7 using the update manager.

The problem is that I am not able to see the login screen or the desktop.

However the mouse pointer is visible.

I removed old obsoleted packages, ran update, installed gnome desktop but nothing is working.

After reboot anaconda installer like screen popped up with license validation and user creation prompt. After finishing with it the screen again went blank with just a mouse pointer.

When I run an application with ssh -X login it prompts that:

libGL error: failed to load driver: nouveau

I have xorg-x11-drv-nouveau-1.0.10-5.el7.x86_64 installed.

I reinstalled xorg-x11-drv-nouveau and mesa-libGL but still the problem persists.

LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose outputs this:

libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib64/dri/tls/nouveau_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib64/dri/nouveau_dri.so
libGL error: failed to open drm device: No such file or directory
libGL error: failed to load driver: nouveau
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib64/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib64/dri/swrast_dri.so
libGL: Can't open configuration file /root/.drirc: No such file or directory.

Shouldn't it be using nouveau_drv.so instead of nouveau_dri.so.

systemctl status gdm.service says that gdm is active and running but some errors show up:

gnome-session[2734]: JS ERROR: !!!     lineNumber = '475'
gnome-session[2734]: JS ERROR: !!!     stack = '"notify("Unable to lock","Lock was blocked by an application")@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/main.js:475
gnome-session[2734]: notifyError("Unable to lock","Lock was blocked by an application")@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/main.js:495
gnome-session[2734]: GLib-GIO-CRITICAL: g_dbus_connection_call_internal: assertion `object_path != NULL && g_variant_is_object_path (object_path)' failed

Restarting gdm doesn't help:

systemd[1]: Starting GNOME Display Manager...
systemd[1]: Started GNOME Display Manager.
gdm[780]: Child process 791 was already dead.
gdm[780]: GLib-GObject: g_object_ref: assertion `object->ref_count > 0' failed
gdm[780]: GLib-GObject: g_object_unref: assertion `object->ref_count > 0' failed
gdm[780]: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.030752 seconds
gdm[2087]: GLib-GObject: g_object_unref: assertion `object->ref_count > 0' failed

I don't understand what is causing this problem.

Solution

Seems to me that your GUI desktop installation is incomplete. I don't blame you, it's a bit difficult to figure out what to install, and chances are some packages are missing. I hope there's nothing left over from 6.5 (i.e you removed GNOME desktop and X first before doing the upgrade)

The yum groupinstall ... from yesteryear has been changed considerably. This won't resolve any graphics driver issues, but at least this should get the default VGA driver installed and hopefully working.

Try the following, which is from the HOWTO I'm writing for CentOS 6.5 -> 7 upgrade. I'm still writing the guide so if you have anything to contribute, please comment.

At your terminal, as root (or sudo ....)

yum groups mark convert

To convert the old CentOS 6 group package groups over to the new v7 groups.

yum groups install "GNOME Desktop"

To install the GNOME (and X) packages, some of which may not have been installed.

Then see if you can startx to get a GUI up.

If you can, you can switch on the GUI logon screen (plymouth).

ln -sf /lib/systemd/system/graphical.target /etc/systemd/system/default.target

to get X and your window manager starting up by default and presenting you with a graphical login screen. (This is the systemd replacement for modifying inittab.)

Comments

[dmansfield]

I have this problem too, with Intel graphics hardware so I think nouveau has nothing to do with it. I also get black screen with mouse cursor (x is running, but GDM is dead). Also, after telinit 3 to get to text mode, startx launches GNOME3 classic mode just fine (although I haven't done anything but logout).