Well, first I have found: cat /var/log/sys| grep -i gnome
Oct 25 19:22:58 nutyx dbus-daemon[3070]: [session uid=0 pid=3068] Activating service name='org.a11y.Bus' requested by ':1.0' (uid=0 pid=3080 comm="/usr/libexec/gnome-session-check-accelerated ")
Oct 25 19:22:58 nutyx dbus-daemon[3070]: [session uid=0 pid=3068] Activating service name='org.gtk.vfs.Daemon' requested by ':1.2' (uid=0 pid=3080 comm="/usr/libexec/gnome-session-check-accelerated ")
Oct 25 19:22:58 nutyx gnome-session-binary[3052]: WARNING: Falling back to non-systemd startup procedure due to error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.systemd1 was not provided by any .service files
Oct 25 19:22:58 nutyx gnome-session-binary[3052]: WARNING: Could not get session id for session. Check that logind is properly installed and pam_systemd is getting used at login.
Oct 25 19:22:58 nutyx gnome-session-binary[3052]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Oct 25 19:22:58 nutyx gnome-session-binary[3052]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
Oct 25 19:22:58 nutyx gnome-session-binary[3052]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
Oct 25 19:22:59 nutyx gnome-session-binary[3052]: WARNING: App 'pulseaudio.desktop' exited with code 1
Now, this
Could not get session id for session. Check that logind is properly installed and pam_systemd is getting used at login. seems to be often present on Linux distros NOT USING Systemd. The solution is easy: use systemd
No more seriously, one can read that it has been a problem with Gnome:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Gentoo-GNOME-3.30-No-Systemdwhich links to:
https://www.gentoo.org/news/2019/03/27/gnome-330-openrc.htmlwhich explains that elogind, is a program that somehow fake the presence of systemd, and allows login.
We have a very recent (if not the last) of elogind.
But this is not enough, some programs must be patched to use elogind (through the use of pkg-config):
https://github.com/elogind/elogind/issues/70but I have not investigated (not even sure I am qualified to investigate this) that we haved patched versions for these packages.
In a related bug:
https://github.com/elogind/elogind/issues/61the guy seems to suggest the problem was that he was using a su from busybox, rather than from... I don't know, I don't really understood this.