Ubuntu 20.04 fails to start desktop GUI after meson install in /usr/local
Describe your issue
I've build GStreamer 1.20.0.1 on Ubuntu 20.04. Meson was given the install prefix /usr/local/
. After installation with meson Ubuntu recognizes that GStreamer 1.20 is installed (checked with gst-inspect-1.0
and pkg-config --modversion gstreamer-1.0
). I could also build a application that depended on GStreamer 1.20. So far so good.
But after reboot Ubuntu startup hangs with a black screen with blinking cursor. After removing all files installed by meson (see Solutions you have tried) Ubuntu did start as usual.
Expected Behavior
Ubuntu 20.04 starts as usual.
Observed Behavior
- After GStreamer installation with meson: cannot launch any application.
- When laptop is rebooted after GStreamer installation with meson: Ubuntu 20.04 hangs in startup with a black screen with blinking cursor. The terminal can still be used via CTRL+ALT+F3.
Setup
- Operating System: Ubuntu 20.04.1
- Device: Computer (Lenovo Thinkpad T490)
- GStreamer Version: 1.20.0.1
- Command line:
Steps to reproduce the bug
- Open terminal
- Install GStreamer dependencies needed for build:
sudo apt install build-essentials flex bison ninja-build python3 python3-distutils libssl-dev libsrtp2-dev
- Install meson from pip3 (apt version is too old).
sudo apt install python3-pip
and dosudo pip3 install meson
. - Clone gstreamer repository
git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer.git
and switch to branch 1.20git checkout 1.20
. - Go to gstreamer directory
cd ./gstreamer
. - Do
meson --prefix=/usr/local -Dugly=enabled -Dgst-plugins-ugly:x264=enabled -Dbad=enabled -Dgst-plugins-bad:webrtc=enabled -Dgst-plugins-bad:srtp=enabled -Ddevtools=enabled -Dgpl=enabled -Dlibnice=enabled builddir
- Use ninja to build
ninja -C ./builddir
. - Install meson
sudo meson install -C ./builddir/
How reproducible is the bug?
I've installed GStreamer twice, second time on a clean machine, and both times I could not start Ubuntu desktop. My colleague followed the same steps on another machine with Ubuntue 20.04 and he had the same problem.
Solutions you have tried
-
Switched from gdm3 to lightdm. With lightdm you do get a login screen. However, after login it says that there was an error and after a while it returns to the login screen.
-
The Ubuntu startup hangs on a black screen with blinking cursor. Use CTRl+ALT+F3 to enter command line. CD to gstreamer install directory. Meson stores a list of installed files and directories in
./builddir/meson-logs/install-log.txt
. I used vim to addsudo rm -r
to every line of that file, made the file executable, and executed it. This solved the problem (although it also uninstalled gstreamer so we are back to square one).
Step 2 is not a solution, but this uninstalls GStreamer which enables you to use Ubuntu again. This does prove that the installation of GStreamer causes the problem.