I was experimenting with my Debian system (it says wheezy/sid when I log in with tty), and broke it somehow.
When I start, there is a black screen with a watch cursor. It stays like that, but if I hit the usual, say, Ctrl-Alt-F6, I get tty. Here, among the processes listed below, I found that
pkill -9 twm
will immediately bring me away from tty to the GUI view (formerly the black screen), where there is the familiar login screen. It is not possible to do a normal login, but using twm works. (Probably I messed up Gnome. aptitude says cannot do anything: abort because too many errors.)
As for me, twm is not at all unpleasant, so my question is, do you have any idea how to get away with that initial pkill?
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 1 0 0 18:16 ? 00:00:01 init [2]
root 2 0 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kthreadd]
root 3 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root 4 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kworker/0:0]
root 5 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kworker/u:0]
root 6 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [migration/0]
root 7 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [watchdog/0]
root 8 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [cpuset]
root 9 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [khelper]
root 10 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kdevtmpfs]
root 11 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [netns]
root 12 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [sync_supers]
root 13 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [bdi-default]
root 14 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kintegrityd]
root 15 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kblockd]
root 16 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kworker/0:1]
root 17 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [khungtaskd]
root 18 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kswapd0]
root 19 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [ksmd]
root 20 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [khugepaged]
root 21 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [fsnotify_mark]
root 22 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [crypto]
root 114 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [khubd]
root 129 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [ata_sff]
root 131 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [scsi_eh_0]
root 132 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [scsi_eh_1]
root 133 2 1 18:16 ? 00:00:04 [kworker/u:1]
root 134 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kworker/u:2]
root 144 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kworker/0:2]
root 147 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kworker/0:3]
root 174 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kjournald]
root 259 1 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 udevd --daemon
root 409 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [kpsmoused]
root 442 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [hd-audio0]
root 1106 2 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 [flush-8:0]
root 1118 1 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 dhclient -1 -v -pf /run/dhclient.eth0.pid -lf /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient.eth0.leases eth0
daemon 1342 1 0 18:16 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/portmap
root 1421 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/rsyslogd -c5
101 1455 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system
root 1479 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/acpid
root 1512 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/gdm3
root 1535 1512 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Display1
root 1537 1535 0 18:17 tty7 00:00:00 /usr/bin/Xorg :0 -br -verbose -novtswitch -auth /var/run/gdm3/auth-for-Debian-gdm-TSeI8C/database -nolisten tcp vt7
root 1541 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/acpi_fakekeyd
root 1614 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
daemon 1642 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/atd
avahi 1670 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon: running [VLAN-3434.local]
avahi 1671 1670 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon: chroot helper
www-data 1691 1614 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 1692 1614 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 1693 1614 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 1694 1614 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
www-data 1695 1614 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
root 1728 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/bluetoothd
root 1778 1535 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-session-worker
root 1788 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/accountsservice/accounts-daemon
root 1789 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon --no-daemon
root 1877 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/cron
root 1911 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkitd --no-debug
root 1922 259 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 udevd --daemon
root 1923 259 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 udevd --daemon
root 1927 2 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 [kauditd]
root 1934 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/cupsd -C /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
incal 1937 1778 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 twm
colord 1942 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/colord/colord
colord 1970 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/colord/colord-sane
root 2002 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/kerneloops
incal 2045 1937 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session twm
incal 2048 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session twm
incal 2109 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session
root 2129 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe
mysql 2443 2129 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --plugin-dir=/usr/lib/mysql/plugin --user=mysql --pid-file=/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid --socket=/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock --port=3306
root 2444 2129 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 logger -t mysqld -p daemon.error
102 2812 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/exim4 -bd -q30m
root 2938 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
root 3016 1 0 18:17 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/minissdpd -i 0.0.0.0
root 3032 1 0 18:17 tty1 00:00:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
root 3033 1 0 18:17 tty2 00:00:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty2
root 3034 1 0 18:17 tty3 00:00:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty3
root 3035 1 0 18:17 tty4 00:00:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty4
root 3036 1 0 18:17 tty5 00:00:00 /bin/login --
root 3037 1 0 18:17 tty6 00:00:00 /sbin/getty 38400 tty6
incal 3066 3036 0 18:19 tty5 00:00:00 -bash
incal 3133 3066 0 18:20 tty5 00:00:00 ps -Af
