Boot stalls with black screen, start-hello command loops forever

[alex-spataru]

Issue Summary

Cannot reach the desktop on the second boot in a Parallels VM environment.

Environment

• helloSystem Version: 0.8.1
• Virtual Machine: Parallels VM

Steps to Reproduce

1. Set up a Parallels VM as described in the guide.
2. Boot into the live environment and complete the installation.
3. Successfully reach into the desktop environment on the first attempt, try to install Firefox and fail at it.
4. Reboot the VM, attempt to boot into the desktop again.

Expected Behavior

The system should boot into the desktop environment seamlessly, as it did on the first boot.

Actual Behavior

The system stalls at a black screen and does not reach the desktop.

Troubleshooting Steps Taken

1. Switched to TTY using Ctrl+Alt+F2.

2. Executed the following commands:

   sudo killall Xorg
   sudo service dbus restart
   sudo service slim restart

   Result: A login screen appeared, but led to a black screen upon login.

3. Returned to the TTY, executed the following commands:

   sudo killall Xorg
   startx
   start-hello

Result: The start-hello command looped forever with the following message:

I plan to replicate this issue on other VMs and configurations (e.g., VirtualBox) during the week and will update this thread with my results. Judging from the log, there might be a Qt dependency issue preventing the start, but it seems strange that both the live environment & first boot attempt worked without any issues...

Please let me know if I can provide more information to you or run additional tests with the offending VM :)

[alex-spataru]

Ok, I've done some further testing with VirtualBox. Everything worked perfectly; I even rebooted twice without encountering any issues. However, the problem resurfaced when I tried to install Firefox. Take a look at some of the packages that the system attempted to upgrade:

The installation didn't complete successfully. Below is the error message/warning I received:

After rebooting, the system ended up in a broken state, similar to what I experienced with the Parallels VM:

I suspect that upgrading all packages might resolve this issue, although I'm new to FreeBSD and haven't explored the specific commands to do so. Regardless, I think it's important to either prevent users from inadvertently breaking the system by installing an application or to update the documentation with quick-fix guides for such scenarios. As with the last message, please let me know if I can help by providing more information or tests. Thanks for all the effort!

[probonopd]

This is possibly caused because it is now a new quarter, which means that all the quarterly packages get upgraded. I can only suspect that doing this, pkg is uninstalling some vital packages? In any case, I think it's time to do another helloSystem ISO release soon, which will contain the Q4 packages.

[alex-spataru]

Thanks for the feedback! I just downloaded the latest (developer) ISO and can confirm that the issue does not occur. Shall I close this issue?

[probonopd]

We need to find a way to tell pkg to never uninstall key packages. It would be interesting to know which package(s) pkg automatically uninstalled, which caused this breakage.

[probonopd]

Let's reopen in case you can provide more information, thanks.