Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon cannot start a session

Question

As of today, I cannot login into my account. I start the computer, get to the login screen, login and then this following error appears:

Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds, if you...

And my ~/.xsession-errors file has this output:

initctl: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused

/etc/mdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...

/etc/mdm/Xsession: 21: /home/lenduya/.profile: source: not found

localuser:lenduya being added to access control list

lenduya being my username.

My setup:

• Thinkpad T430

• dualboot with Windows 10.

What I've tried:

• repair broken packages: chose advanced Ubuntu at the booting screen, selected repair broken packages

• sudo apt-get install cinnamon: 0 new packages installed, cinnamon already at the latest version

• sudo apt-get update: 0 new packages installed

What I did prior:

• no major updates today AFAIK (two packages were updated)

• computer worked normally, just VLC wouldn't start. I probed around a little bit, there was one suggestion that I should check whether Pulse Audio is one of the softwares that starts up automatically. So I went on to look and Pulse Audio wasn't among things that Startup starts with. Clicked on Add software but didn't find Pulse Audio in the list so I closed it.

• I try to restart the computer, maybe that would fix the VLC issue.

• this error occurs.

Any suggestions on how to fix this issue? I'd prefer if I did not have to reinstall it.

Solution 1

It's VirtualBox that is the problem. Fix: <Ctrl><Alt><F1> to get a shell and login to the prompt.

Then:

    sudo apt-get remove virtualbox*

Credit goes to: Mint forum

Solution 2

As /usr/lib/virtualbox/additions/libGL.so.1 was reported in the crash log, I have tried to only remove the Virtualbox guest addiction, and it worked for me:

sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-guest-utils

Comments

[kevintechie]

I'm having the same issue. Although, I'm not dual boot w/ Windows. I'm also on a ThinkPad (W550s). I did, however have some updates install over the last few days. I didn't reboot until today.

[kevintechie]

Ha! I did see a VirtualBox update go by.

[Melroy van den Berg]

Try first: sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-guest*

[shonky linux user]

This fix works even for instances not running in VirtualBox.