SOS: HashCat troubleshooting led to loss of graphical login

I was trying to crack a shadow file for a lab machine in the PWK course when hashcat said I couldn't use the mesa-opencl-icd driver. I then followed these official instructions from Kali in an attempt to install a NVIDIA driver for my GEFORCE 940mx with which I could use hashcat:
https://docs.kali.org/general-use/in...-on-kali-linux

I received a pop-up warning during the install describing a kernel mismatch with a nouveau driver (or something like that), then upon reboot I got a grey ":( something went wrong" screen with a logout button.

To troubleshoot, I started by following these instructions:
http://www.adonespitogo.com/articles...a-on-kali-2.0/

After about a dozen tries, I feel confident that no amount of "apt-remove nvidia" commands will save me. Once I got apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade working fully again, I tried the official kali instructions again. I now seem to have nvidia driver 375.82 installed. Hashcat also seems to be working, as I was able to perform a benchmark test and crack the hashes as I had originally intended, however I still can't log into kali graphically.

The "gdm3" command hangs indefinitely when I attempt to run it.

I also found a kali forum thread that told me to check the /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf file, which currently reads:

Quote:

---

# GDM configuration storage
#
# See /usr/share/gdm/gdm.schemas for a list of available options.

[daemon]
# Enabling automatic login
AutomaticLoginEnable = true
AutomaticLogin = root

# Enabling timed login
# TimedLoginEnable = true
# TimedLogin = user1
# TimedLoginDelay = 10

# Reserving more VTs for test consoles (default is 7)
# FirstVT = 9

[security]
AllowRoot = true

[xdmcp]

[greeter]
# Only include selected logins in the greeter
# IncludeAll = false
# Include = user1,user2

[chooser]

[debug]
# More verbose logs
# Additionally lets the X server dump core if it crashes
# Enable = true

---

Kali is installed as the main OS on a laptop. Any recommendations as to how I should proceed would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks very much in advance!

Can you look for any log files, dmesg output, syslog, or any additional debugging details we could go examine? Right now, there's not much to go on.

Thanks very much for the quick reply!

Here's the last line of dmesg output which seems pretty relevant:

Quote:

---

[ 39.414583] gnome-session-f [873]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f29dd6e8139 sp 00007ffebe2984c0 error 4 in libgtk-3.so.0.2200.17[7f29dd405000+6f2000]

---

In Xorg logs, I found the following errors:

Quote:

---

(WW) xf86CloseConsole: KDSETMODE failed: Input/output error
(WW) xf86CloseConsole: VT_GETMODE failed: Input/output error
(WW) xf86CloseConsole: VT_ACTIVATE failed: Input/output error

---

After seeing these, I tried "apt-get --reinstall install gdm3 && apt-get --reinstall install gnome && apt-get --reinstall install gnome-shell && dpkg-reconfigure gdm3", but nothing changed.

Thanks again!

Have you undone your changes from http://www.adonespitogo.com/articles...a-on-kali-2.0/ ?

When I went to delete the files it told me to make, I realized I never had an xorg.conf file created in the first place. I tried making one to their specifications, but I got a corruption error upon booting before I hit the "logout" screen. I deleted both of the files and restarted gdm and gdm3, but got hit with the logout screen again.

Should I have an xorg.conf file? I couldn't find any default suggestions.

I don't want to uninstall the NVIDIA drivers because I need them for hashcat to work, don't I?

Not for PWK, not really. You can ask some of the lab admins about the password policies they have.
As for your question, you don't need to create an xorg.conf...