Fix GNOME GUI Login After Upgrade to Debian 10 Buster (VirtualBox VM)
Hello!
Yesterday I upgraded my old Debian VirtualBox VM from Debian 9 stretch to Debian 10 buster.
After going through all the usual upgrade steps from the official documentation and rebooting, I found myself waiting for the GNOME user selection in order to log in. Except that it was stuck with the gray background and nothing except the mouse cursor was showing up or working.
I switched to a text-only terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F5) and logged in via command line. Looking at /var/log/syslog I found the following messages repeating over and over:
gnome-shell[1281]: Failed to set CRTC mode 1448x953: Invalid argument kernel: [ 192.917346] [drm:drm_crtc_helper_set_config [drm_kms_helper]] ERROR failed to set mode on [CRTC:29:crtc-0]
1448x953 is the resolution I am using for the VM.
This current VM was created back when Debian 7 wheezy was still current, and I knew that a more recently created VM (originally with Debian 9 stretch) was working fine after upgrading to 10, so I figured that the info about the resolution from gnome-shell might have something to do with the VM's settings.
Sure enough, I found out that there were about a handful of settings that were different, most likely because over time VirtualBox defaulted to slightly different settings depending on my hardware, the template for the OS I selected (different Debian major releases) and the VirtualBox release itself. A couple of VM starts and configuration changes later I narrowed the problem down to the following VM setting:
Display => Screen => Video Memory
I raised the original 12 MB to 16 MB and thankfully the next boot showed the GNOME login mask as per usual!
Surely this is a very edge case kind of scenario, but I am hoping that this might help you in case you come across the same problem. All the other search results I found regarding roughly the same error message in the logs were about different things.
Thanks for reading!
Installing the Logitech F710 Wireless Gamepad on Windows 7 x64 (XInput Driver)
Update from 2015-10-18: Windows 10 Pro (x64) does not appear to require this workaround. It automatically installed the correct driver and allowed me to use the controller right away.
Hi!
In order to be able to benefit from using the XInput mode for the Logitech F710 Wireless Gamepad, of course you need to install the correct driver. This is made a little hard for Windows 7 x64 seeing as there is no driver that comes with the device itself.
I found a guide on how you can manage it by using Microsoft's official Xbox 360 Controller driver.
Be careful though, you're messing with driver files. Use this guide at your own risk.
- Go to the Microsoft Hardware downloads page: http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/downloads
- Click on the category "Gaming"
- Click on the link "Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows"
- Download the correct version of the file (Windows 7 64-bit only) and install it
- Open the Device Manager (e.g. [Windows]+[Break] => Device Manager)
- Right-click on the entry with "Logitech F710" in its name and the yellow triangle icon in front of it
- Open its properties
- Switch to the "Details" tab
- Choose the property "Hardware Ids"
- Right-click on the one without the "&REV_<Number>" at the end of the name and copy it. It should look something like this: USB\VID_046D&PID_C21F
- Go to the directory in which you installed the Xbox 360 Accessories Software a minute ago: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Xbox 360 Accessories
- Open the file Xusb21.inf with a plain text editor like Notepad
- At the top in the commented section you can see the line containing "Wireless Common Controller USB\Vid_045E&Pid_0719". Search for "USB\Vid_045E&Pid_0719" and replace each occurence with the hardware ID you copied earlier. Afterwards, save it to the file. You might need to have your editor program in elevated privilege mode in order to do so.
- Go back to the Device Manager with the open F710 properties window
- Switch to the "Driver" tab
- Click on the "Update Driver..." button
- In the assistant, choose "Browse my computer for driver software"
- Choose the path "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Xbox 360 Accessories"
- Confirm the driver warning and you're good to go
To check if it really worked, you can just press the Logitech button on the game controller and it should cause a little frame with the Xbox logo, the text "Click for Help" and a down-pointing arrow button and an X button to pop up in the lower center of your screen.
I do not usually recommend modifying driver files like that, but I have used this method before and it worked for me, so I stopped looking for a better way, as there doesn't seem to be any official solution provided by Logitech themselves (which is a shame).
Original post and the ones who can be credited with this solution: post by breakfastmonkey on the official Logitech forums (referencing a couple of previous posts in the same thread).
Thanks for reading.