38

I was looking for a way to switch to gdm3 from lightdm, when I found this answer. So I tried to apply it, and entered sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3, then a selection screen appeared with 2 options: gdm3 and lightdm. It was the same screen that appeared during the installation of GNOME (using sudo apt install ubuntu-gnome-desktop && gnome-shell). I chose gdm3 then pressed Enter, then I got this error:

gdm.service is not active, cannot reload.
invoke-rc.d: initscript gdm3, action "reload" failed.

Any ideas?

UPDATE

It turns out that it just required a reboot to work. But I still want to know the meaning of that error I got. Does anyone have any explanation?

Tooniis
  • 1,602

5 Answers5

46

re: sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 error message.

Just reboot and you should be running gdm3.

The error that you're receiving just means that gdm3 wasn't already running, so it couldn't reload it.

heynnema
  • 73,649
23

Use this sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm in place of sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3 this and then choose gdm3.

Kulfy
  • 18,154
Vardaan Shukla
  • 331
3

Works for my WSL2 Ubuntu Desktop install - thanks:-

sudo systemctl start gdm3.service    
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3
wizball
  • 119
1

I actually found a hack! You just need to type this in terminal:

sudo apt-get install lightdm

Then you will get the option to choose your display manager where you can choose GDM instead of LightDM.

Worked for me, hope it works for you too.

Eliah Kagan
  • 119,640
Ashutosh Kumar
  • 11
1
sudo systemctl start gdm3.service    
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3

So manually start gdm3, then reconfigure it and it stays working, even after a reboot.

(I know, weird, I'll update the answer if I work out what causes this)

Tim Bray
  • 249