Good morning,
I’m a newbie here, and have setup a Raspberry Pi setup with Grafana.
Since installing Grafana, I have lost access to the Raspbian desktop. I can still SSH into it, but is it normal behaviour to lose access to the desktop or is it supposed to act as a headless unit?
If I can get the desktop back as well as have Grafana on it, then can somebody tell me what I need to do please?
Cheers,
Greg
No, that is not normal behaviour.
What exactly do you mean by ‘lost access to the Raspbian desktop’?
Look in /var/log/syslog after reboot and see if there are any errors shown there.
Hi Clanlaw,
Thanks for getting back to me.
When I reboot the device, I am prompted to login to the device with username and password, but after the login dialog box, the entire screen is grey. No icons are displayed, but the mouse cursor is visible and moves. I can still access the device via SSH and other services running - just no interactive desktop.
If it’s any help, I have VNC and Teamviewer (when it goes to site) running on there, so I’m not sure if it’s a clash perhaps - but it only happened after Grafana installation - thought perhaps this unit needed to be headless.
I’ve done some reading and some say that reflashing the SD card might help but this is a fresh install, and aside from Grafana, Teamviewer and VNC it’s a clean install - and otherwise works perfectly.
The log contents from last reboot to writing this message is as below, but I cannot see anything in there that leads me to identify the problem. What am I missing?
Jun 28 08:04:58 raspberrypi systemd[1]: apt-daily.timer: Adding 3h 23min 57.624817s random time.
Jun 28 08:04:58 raspberrypi systemd[1]: apt-daily-upgrade.timer: Adding 7min 4.368246s random time.
Jun 28 08:04:59 raspberrypi vncserver-x11[450,root]: SPrintConnMgr: Failed to add printer: server-error-service-unavailable
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi lightdm[817]: Error getting user list from org.freedesktop.Accounts: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.Accounts was not provided by any .service files
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Stopping User Manager for UID 109...
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopping Virtual filesystem service...
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopping D-Bus User Message Bus...
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopped target Default.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopped D-Bus User Message Bus.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Created slice User Slice of pi.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting User Manager for UID 1000...
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Session c3 of user pi.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopped Virtual filesystem service.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopped target Basic System.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopped target Paths.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopped target Sockets.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Closed GnuPG cryptographic agent and passphrase cache (restricted).
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Closed GnuPG cryptographic agent (access for web browsers).
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Closed GnuPG cryptographic agent (ssh-agent emulation).
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Closed GnuPG cryptographic agent and passphrase cache.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Closed D-Bus User Message Bus Socket.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Reached target Shutdown.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Starting Exit the Session...
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Stopped target Timers.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[699]: Received SIGRTMIN+24 from PID 922 (kill).
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Stopped User Manager for UID 109.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Removed slice User Slice of lightdm.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Reached target Timers.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Listening on GnuPG cryptographic agent and passphrase cache.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Reached target Paths.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Starting D-Bus User Message Bus Socket.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Listening on GnuPG cryptographic agent (access for web browsers).
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Listening on GnuPG cryptographic agent and passphrase cache (restricted).
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Listening on GnuPG cryptographic agent (ssh-agent emulation).
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Listening on D-Bus User Message Bus Socket.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Reached target Sockets.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Reached target Basic System.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Reached target Default.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Startup finished in 107ms.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started User Manager for UID 1000.
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi lightdm[453]: Error opening audit socket: Protocol not supported
Jun 28 08:05:04 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Started D-Bus User Message Bus.
Jun 28 08:05:05 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Session c4 of user pi.
Jun 28 08:05:06 raspberrypi dbus-daemon[941]: Activating via systemd: service name='org.gtk.vfs.Daemon' unit='gvfs-daemon.service'
Jun 28 08:05:06 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Starting Virtual filesystem service...
Jun 28 08:05:06 raspberrypi dbus-daemon[941]: Successfully activated service 'org.gtk.vfs.Daemon'
Jun 28 08:05:06 raspberrypi systemd[916]: Started Virtual filesystem service.
Jun 28 08:05:07 raspberrypi dbus[304]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1' unit='polkit.service'
Jun 28 08:05:07 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting Authorization Manager...
Jun 28 08:05:07 raspberrypi polkitd[1048]: started daemon version 0.105 using authority implementation `local' version `0.105'
Jun 28 08:05:07 raspberrypi dbus[304]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1'
Jun 28 08:05:07 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Authorization Manager.
Jun 28 08:05:07 raspberrypi vncserver-x11[450,root]: SPrintConnMgr: Failed to set allowed users: server-error-service-unavailable
Jun 28 08:05:20 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Session c5 of user pi.
Thank you for your help. 
Just as a test, I disabled VNC and removed Teamviewer but it did not resolve the problem.
How did you install Grafana?
[Edit] Also what size SD card have you got and what does the the command df show?
Hi there.
It’s a 16GB card with only 38% used.
For the installation, I followed these instructions for Debian:
https://grafana.com/grafana/download and
https://grafana.com/docs/installation/debian/
Whilst I’m still learning, Grafana seems to be behaving.
PS: Thank you for your help.
Greg
And the result of the df command?
Result of DF is:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 15203948 5438020 9082708 38% /
devtmpfs 469544 0 469544 0% /dev
tmpfs 474152 0 474152 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 474152 12360 461792 3% /run
tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 474152 0 474152 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1 44220 22685 21535 52% /boot
tmpfs 94828 0 94828 0% /run/user/1000
That looks ok. You could try, from the login screen, hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 which should give you a terminal, login then then run startx which I think should start up X and maybe you will get a useful error. Also have a look in the file .xsession-errors and see if there is anything there.
However, my recommendation would be to not bother with the GUI on the Pi anyway. Everything can be done via ssh and you will save on the resources the GUI uses, even when it is not in use. I usually install Raspbian Lite which does not include the GUI but if I remember rightly you can disable it in raspi-config. Then all you are wasting is SD card space, but it doesn’t seem like you have an issue in that area anyway.
Hi Clanclaw,
I logged in, then ran STARTX and was then presented with a black screen with the mouse cursor. Same problem. I’ll take your advice and reconfigure the device with Raspbian Lite and just do what I need to via SSH.
Thank you very much for your help.
Greg
You may find this useful, though I haven’t updated it for Buster yet, but I don’t think there will be any dramatic changes.
http://blog.clanlaw.org.uk/pi-headless-server.html