Debian 10 booting to console after using sudo apt-install of anything

Hi Everyone,

My apologies for the long description, but it seems like something in the steps I have been taking must be the root cause. After successfully using 2.7 for quite a while, I decided to upgrade to 2.8 using the ISO. Initial issues with the USB were solved by using a CDROM instead of a USB stick and the installation was successful and I was able to use my CNC again after some minor edits to the HAL.

The other day while doing some other odds and ends, I installed Chrome and VisualCode on the system, but then didn't check anything further.

Today, I wanted to start getting git installed and merge my edits to git when I noticed that the system was not recognizing the USB. I tried rebooting, but found that the logout screen was abnormal (no hibernate and restart and shutdown both greyed out). I could only logout, nothing more and this resulted in a blinking cursor and nothing else on the screen. CTRL-ALT-DEL forced it to do a proper shutdown and restart, but now it would only log in to the console, no XFCE anymore. sudo startxfce4 would still start the GUI, but as root.

Since I didn't have a lot invested at this point, I decided I had done something very bad and the best thing to would be to simply re-install from the ISO. That was quickly done. I killed wicd and replaced it with network-manager and set up the connection to my 7i76e. And then I installed git using sudo apt-install git-all. This installed quite a lot, I don't have a log of everything, but I assume it was all normal.

At the end of all that, I went to ping my mesa card and received no response. And then realized that network-manager was not running either. And the logout screen would again only allow a logout and not a restart. And now it is booting back to the console again.

Has anyone seen this behaviour? Any idea what it is that I might be doing wrong?

Motherboard is a J3455B-ITX with a 500GB samsung SSD that ran very solid under 2.7.

Kind regards,

Sam

Is there anything useful in the kernel log (dmesg)

Other than that, this does not sound like anything I have ever seen.
Though I have had (different) wierdness after completely filling the disc. But with 500GB that seems very unlikely.

You may have have to dive into systemd and check the journals (logs) to see what is going on.
Also I would check the file permissions for your home folder and for the rest of the system. I know this sounds daft and a little stupid.

Oh and when using apt or apt-get check before going pressing yes.

When I was using the same M\B I didn't install any additional display drivers. It's a solid M\B and runs well even in a 1 unit rack case in a garage during an Australian summer.

Not daft at all. A friend pointed me to a link somewhere with a similar issue where root gained ownership of the home directory or one of the config files and it sounds very similar to my problem. I'm trying a new installation and will attempt to log every step.

If I remember selecting "login without password" or something similar can cause issues. It's been a while since I've installed\used Debian. I prefer Mint, only cos that's my daily driver OS.

well this just happened to me on a laptop I am using as a bit of a workshop machine / testbed for stuff before copying over to the actual machine PC's

I noticed that it wouldn't let me logout, and now its as swag describes, boots to terminal, can run sudo startxfce4 and will get me to the desktop GUI as root. 
No network, no synaptic package manager, no option to shutdown, etc.

Last thing I think I did that may have triggered this:  I plugged in an external mouse and keyboard (Logitech G213 keyboard and Logitech G203 mouse)

The question is - how do I recover from this, short of a complete reinstall from USB?