[Bug 788859] Re: 3D session selected even if not supported; availability of 2D session not obvious

[Eliah Kagan]

I am beginning to wonder whether or not the blank desktop when ubiquity-
dm (i.e., the graphical Install Ubuntu / Try Ubuntu selection screen)
should have come up is really the same bug as the lack of automatic
checking for 3D support and uninformative "Oh no! Something has gone
wrong" error.

On a different machine with an ATi Radeon HD 5700 Series video card
running the Oneiric amd64 20110526.1 daily-live CD, manually selecting
"Try Ubuntu without installing" from the non-graphical boot menu yields
a somewhat usable Unity desktop. (There are some serious usability bugs
with Oneiric's Unity on this amd64 machine, which I hope to get around
to searching for and, if unreported, report, sometime in the next couple
of days.) However, booting normally (without bringing up the non-
graphical boot menu) yields a blank, nonfunctional desktop instead of
the ubiquity-dm window, just as on the i386 machine on which I
originally reported this bug.

Should I split this bug report and create a second bug? I can edit the
description to remove the text about the blank screen when ubiquity-dm
should appear, and file a new bug about that problem.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/788859

Title:
  3D session selected even if not supported; availability of 2D session
  not obvious

Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: ubiquity

  I booted a system without graphics acceleration from the Oneiric i386
  20110526.1 daily-live CD. A blank blue desktop background was shown,
  with no other graphical user interface elements. I waited over 30
  minutes, and no ubiquity-dm menu was ever shown prompting me to select
  my language and indicate if I wanted to Install Ubuntu or Try Ubuntu.

  So I rebooted, and pressed Spacebar when the person and keyboard icons
  appeared at the bottom of the screen, to bring up the non-graphical
  boot menu. I selected English and "Try Ubuntu without installing". A
  blue desktop was shown, and very soon afterward the "Oh no! Something
  has  gone wrong" screen came up, with Log Out as the only option. (I
  have attached a screenshot of this screen, in case there is any
  confusion about what I am describing.)

  Upon logging out, I was able to manually change the session type to
  "Ubuntu Classic (no effects)" and log in to get a functional desktop.
  However, this is not obvious to non-technical users, which includes
  most users (who probably don't know that you *can* log on to a live CD
  system with username ubuntu and a blank password, and also probably
  don't know that you can select a session type at the bottom of the
  login screen while it is asking for your password).

  In previous versions of Ubuntu (or at least Natty), this message
  (pointed out to itself be confusing in bug 683936, and quoted here
  from that bug) used to be issued:

  "Sorry, you don't have 3d support, install it for your graphic
  hardware to get Unity or please reboot and select 'Classic session' at
  startup."

  I recall that, in Natty, clicking OK (or maybe it was Close) in that
  message box would cause Ubuntu to provide a classic desktop
  automatically. So this bug could be summarized as consisting of two
  parts: (1) that a 3D session does not automatically fall back to be
  replaced by a 2D session (actually it does, in that the "Oh no!
  Something has gone wrong!" message is displayed by a window rendered
  by metacity, but this is not a functional session), and (2) that the
  ubiquity-dm menu does not launch, and without manually selecting an
  option from the non-graphical boot menu, all you get in Oneiric on a
  system without graphics acceleration is a blank desktop.

  For the sake of thoroughness, I'll attach some log files that document
  the cause of the "Oh no! Something has  gone wrong" error. I am
  reporting this bug from the 2D session, so the relevant lines are in
  /home/ubuntu/.xsession-errors.old:

  Compiz (opengl) - Fatal: GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap is missing
  Compiz (opengl) - Fatal: software rendering detected

  There are other errors later in that file, but they appear to be from
  attempts to interact with the Compiz Fusion desktop that couldn't be
  started due to lack of hardware OpenGL support. I'll also attach
  /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old, to show that there didn't seem to be any
  other problem, as well as .xsession-errors and Xorg.0.log (from the
  new, good, classic session, for comparison).

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
  Package: ubiquity 2.6.10
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.39-3.9-generic 2.6.39
  Uname: Linux 2.6.39-3-generic i686
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Thu May 26 21:07:12 2011
  LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Alpha i386 (20110526.1)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:en
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: ubiquity
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)