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I replaced the default dynamic gallery - with Jammy jellies and other default wallpapers - by my own (probably erroneously composed) .xml. I did it in the GNOME tweaks app. Now I can't do anything: It logs me out and upon login it says that the system crashed and can't recover.

How to repair it from the TTY, starting from the step of entering it at all?

Ctrl+ Alt+ F2 worked before a reboot and now does not anymore.

UPD: I "solved" it by booting from a live USB and sudo rm /media/DISK-ID/home/USERNAME/.config/dconf/user. It hard-reset my GNOME settings and now it's fine again! But I am wondering nevertheless what would be the right algorithm.

Broken Mesh Collider
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1 Answers1

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Since you solved your problem, I'll address alternate ways to log in.

  • You could log in as a different user whose GUI config is not corrupt and use su to switch to yourself and delete the corrupted config.
  • ctrlaltF2 might work, but that failing, try F3 or F4 instead... function keys 1-4 correspond to virtual consoles 1-4 which typically have a getty on them to provide a text login. The graphics screen may also be on one of those, so they might not all get you a text screen.
  • There may be a failsafe GUI login option. At the GUI login screen, enter your username but before you accept the password, click on the icon near by and see if there are other desktop options, especially a failsafe option.
  • If you have enabled remote ssh on your machine, use another computer to ssh into it instead of logging in on the console.
  • (This is getting to last resort territory) Reboot your machine and at the grub menu, select safe graphics mode or rescue mode and see if you can log in. There are multiple ways to get into repair mode from the grub menu.
  • If you can't get any of the above to work, booting a live disk and mounting your system drives is the last option before reinstall. You shouldn't need a reinstall unless you've actually corrupted the OS badly.
user10489
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