failed to start Gnome Display Manager

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
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btdai
Posts: 2
Joined: 3. Nov 2016, 10:40

failed to start Gnome Display Manager

Post by btdai »

Host: Windows 10
Guest: Fedora 21 64-bits
the virtual machine is there for about a year already

How did this happen?

unclean shut down due to battery power

VirtualBox version: 5.0.28 and 5.1.8, do not work

tried rescue mode as well

also tried turning on/off "enable 3D accelaration"

Is there anyway to fix this? or log in without graphics?

Thank you.
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socratis
Site Moderator
Posts: 27330
Joined: 22. Oct 2010, 11:03
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Win(*>98), Linux*, OSX>10.5
Location: Greece

Re: failed to start Gnome Display Manager

Post by socratis »

I think that you should be looking at Fedora's forums for a solution. A "Failed to start Journal Service" doesn't sound good. I'd look for recovery for the client and forget for a minute that it runs on a Virtual Machine; treat it as you would a real computer.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
btdai
Posts: 2
Joined: 3. Nov 2016, 10:40

Re: failed to start Gnome Display Manager

Post by btdai »

Thank you, I'll ask in the fedora forum.
callMeRK
Posts: 1
Joined: 8. Mar 2021, 13:24

Re: failed to start Gnome Display Manager

Post by callMeRK »

This might be old but did not have a valid answer. While someone thought the issue could be related to OS itself and recommended a Fedora forum.

But, I have faced the same problem today and after digging a bit deeper I found the root cause and fixed it.

Issue: (Ubuntu/Fedora) You see a failure message in the boot log - Failed to start Gnome Display Manager
and you don't get access to terminal

Do this:
1. Power On the Virtual machine, Once you hit the error and stuck
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 or Ctrl+Alt+F3 to get a new terminal
3. Login using root / user name and password
4. Run "df -h" to list all partitions with their usage information
5. Check if "/" root partition or any other partition is "Use" above 95%
6. If there's low disk space in any of the partitions - delete some data and free some memory - List directory wise usage "du -d1 -h"
7. Reboot.

This worked for me, my root partition "/" was at "Use" 100% that's why GDM could not start.
Once I freed some memory, it started working fine. :D

Hope this helps. :idea:
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