11.10 fresh install gets stuck at Checking Battery State

[IsmAvatar]

I just did a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 on my Desktop computer. The install seemed to go smoothly. But after the computer rebooted, and I saw Grub (because I also have Windows as an option), and then the purple screen, and then it drops me into this terminal thingy with some text showing the processes that it's starting up, and the last thing it printed was:
Checking battery state... [OK]
_

And then it gets stuck, with the cursor still flashing.
I have noticed that I can drop into a usable terminal by doing the Ctrl+Alt+F1-6, and I can login and do terminal stuff, but display 7 never gets past the battery state to see the lovely login screen and such...

Reminder, this is a Desktop, so it doesn't even have a battery (aside from the cmos) - although I don't think that matters, since it says [OK] meaning it got past the battery thing and got stuck at whatever's next. I had 11.10 working on it very recently, but did a wipe and reinstall in order to fix some sound issues that the LiveCD had no issue with -- and now this.

Things I've tried:
Install 'ubuntu-desktop'. Already installed. Reinstall did nothing.
Reformat and reinstall Ubuntu. Same problem.
Reboot several times. Same problem each time.


I'm totally stuck, and need some help. I can't boot Ubuntu, so I'm stuck booting into Windows or LiveCD.



-=- Solved -=-
For the solution that worked for me, please see reply #9 (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1876236#post11432398)

[drs305]

Is the cursor flashing on a totally black screen? If so, do you have an Nvidia card? You may need to install the driver.

At the grub menu (hold down the SHIFT key during boot if it doesn't appear), highlight the top entry.
Press 'e' to edit the menuentry.
Cursor to the end of the 'linux' line. Remove "quiet splash" and add "nomodeset".
CTRL-x to boot.

If it boots to the Desktop, press the DASH Home button (upper left) and begin to type "Additional Drivers" until it appears.

Try installing the applicable video driver.
(This may work for other missing video card manufacturers as well).

[MAFoElffen]

Is the cursor flashing on a totally black screen? If so, do you have an Nvidia card? You may need to install the driver.

At the grub menu (hold down the SHIFT key during boot if it doesn't appear), highlight the top entry.
Press 'e' to edit the menuentry.
Cursor to the end of the 'linux' line. Remove "quiet splash" and add "nomodeset".
CTRL-x to boot.

If it boots to the Desktop, press the DASH Home button (upper left) and begin to type "Additional Drivers" until it appears.

Try installing the applicable video driver.
(This may work for other missing video card manufacturers as well).
+1 on that... Only thing to add is if you have an ATI Radeon for video, the software repository is not on at a default...

Edit the sources.list:


gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Go down to where it says "Conical Partners" and take out the comment "#" characters. Save and exit.

The section will look similar to this:

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's
## 'partner' repository.
## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the
## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.
# deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner
# deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner
Except that it'll say "onieric" instead of "precise."

If you have ATI Radeon and need the fglrx driver, that driver won't show up in Additional driver unless you uncomment those 2 lines.

[IsmAvatar]

Thanks for the quick replies. Sorry I didn't respond so quickly.

I have an NVidia Geforce 8500.

The screen is mostly black, except the top third of the screen has some text of processes that started up, ending with "Checking battery state". After that, there is a blinking cursor.

I'm going to try your suggestion now and will report back on whether it works or not.

[IsmAvatar]

drs305: I have tried your suggestion and edited the entry, replacing "quiet splash" with "nomodeset" and then continued with boot using Ctrl+X. It proceeded to the purple screen, and then the black screen with several lines of text ending with "Checking battery state" and the flashing cursor, and then did not proceed any further.

In summary, unfortunately that did not fix it, and I'm still having the same issue. I do greatly appreciate you guys trying to help me, and I'll be so happy once this works again.

[drs305]

In summary, unfortunately that did not fix it, and I'm still having the same issue. I do greatly appreciate you guys trying to help me, and I'll be so happy once this works again.

If you can boot the Recovery mode to a command line you can try installing the video drivers manually to see if that fixes things. Select 'root prompt' or 'netroot' and at the command prompt (not the Grub prompt):


apt-get update
apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings*

If you can't do that, or it doesn't work, the only other suggestion I have at the moment would be to try the 'nomodeset' option but instead try some other kernel options such as "noapci noloapic acpi=off".

[fireoftroy]

I had the same thing happen when I ran the update. After hitting Ctrl+Alt+F1, I signed in and entered 'startx' at the command line. The GUI loaded (a bit crude with base graphics but it worked) and from there I could run the software update, which then loaded everything I needed. Another reboot and I was good to go.

[Closrapexa]

This may possibly not be related, but I had the same problem, only with me it was the huge sizes of logfiles in this version, they inflated to multiple Gs. Check the sizes of the files in /var/log, particularly syslog and kernlog. I deleted these files and could then boot to the desktop, and then enabled compression of these files, and now everything works fine.

[MAFoElffen]

drs305: I have tried your suggestion and edited the entry, replacing "quiet splash" with "nomodeset" and then continued with boot using Ctrl+X. It proceeded to the purple screen, and then the black screen with several lines of text ending with "Checking battery state" and the flashing cursor, and then did not proceed any further.

In summary, unfortunately that did not fix it, and I'm still having the same issue. I do greatly appreciate you guys trying to help me, and I'll be so happy once this works again.
Do the same in the grub menu as before, except-- replace "quiet splash" with "--verbose single". It may go to a rescue screen, where you will press resume boot... It will drop you down to a command line prompt.

First lwhile we are able, find out some info on your Video


lspci -vnn | grep VGA

With the card you had, the nomodeset boot option should have worked, since it didn't, theres other things going on. So I'm going to tell you how to get around them...

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-*
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-'uname -r'
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo apt-get update
echo options nouveau modeset=0 > /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau-kms.conf
echo RUN+="/sbin/modprobe nvidia" > /etc/udev/rules.d/90-modprobe.rules
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo reboot
And test.

What all that does, is removes any previous instances of the nvidia driver or it's pieces, makes sure there is a header file there, installs the driver and configures it. It then it straightens out the load order of the files, while updating that to that initial loading image file.

Tell me how it goes.

[IsmAvatar]

Lspci returns this:

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G86 [GeForce 8500 GT] [10de:0421] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G79 [GeForce 9200] [10de:086d] (rev b1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

The latter is my chipset gpu. I have the prior plugged in.

[IsmAvatar]

Yay! You fixed it, MAFoElffen. I followed your instructions word for word, and now I'm looking at the lovely ubuntu desktop - and posting from it.

Any follow-up instructions? It says restricted drivers available (and 177 updates available, so I'll obviously get those).

You guys are the best!

[MAFoElffen]

Lspci returns this:

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G86 [GeForce 8500 GT] [10de:0421] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G79 [GeForce 9200] [10de:086d] (rev b1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

The latter is my chipset gpu. I have the prior plugged in.
I'm assuming that first is integrated into the motherboard. Is the first turned off in BIOS? Sinse both are NVida, this does make a difference.

I have two each NVidia GeoForce 9800 GTX'es SLI Bridged and another box with two NVidia GeoForce `6800 Ultra's SLI bridged. In Linux/Xorg, it's drivers connot handle 2 instances of the same types of cards at the same time. NVidia's drivers can.

What I have to do in Linux (and if your BIOS or motherboard jumpers can't disable the onboard graphics) is to pull one of my GPU's > Boot > Install the nvidia drivers > Shutdown > Reinstall my second GPU > Boot > Rerun nvidia-xconfig to reconfigure and pick up the second GPU.

That "now" make sense?

If you are using both GPU's, after we get it going, I'll tell you how to tweak that...

[IsmAvatar]

I don't want to use the prior GPU. As I said, it's integrated chipset GPU (hence the 200), and it overheats. That's part of the reason I installed the 8500, which I want to use by itself.

I suppose I'll look into turning off the chipset GPU in the bios, but I guess that's not too high priority since everything is working right now.

Ok to install the proprietary driver? Or is that going to break everything that we just did?

[MAFoElffen]

I don't want to use the prior GPU. As I said, it's integrated chipset GPU (hence the 200), and it overheats. That's part of the reason I installed the 8500, which I want to use by itself.

I suppose I'll look into turning off the chipset GPU in the bios, but I guess that's not too high priority since everything is working right now.

Ok to install the proprietary driver? Or is that going to break everything that we just did?
LOL!!!!

Go to the Upper right on the bar, where your user name is... Click on it / a pulldown menu will appear... > Look for System Settings > Select Additional Drivers from the hardware section.

In the Additional Drivers applet select the NVidia current... Select the "Activate" button > Wait... A staus will say its installing, then say it's installed. Then you "should" be done.

[IsmAvatar]

Ok. Thank you! I really appreciate your help.

[Vanish00]

I had the exact problem and this solved my issue. Thanks a lot! Do you think its possible to mark this thread as solved to let others know of this solid fix. Time to check out 11.10 now! :D

[IsmAvatar]

I did put [Solved] in the Title. Dunno if there's another way to mark as solved. But yeah, I noticed a lot of people were having this issue, and this does seem like a solid fix for it.

[drs305]

I did put [Solved] in the Title. Dunno if there's another way to mark as solved. But yeah, I noticed a lot of people were having this issue, and this does seem like a solid fix for it.

You can put a SOLVED tag on a thread via the 'Thread Tools' link at the top right of the first post. (You can also remove it later by the same method should that become necessary.)

[nesnfsn]

Do the same in the grub menu as before, except-- replace "quiet splash" with "--verbose single". It may go to a rescue screen, where you will press resume boot... It will drop you down to a command line prompt.

First lwhile we are able, find out some info on your Video


lspci -vnn | grep VGA

With the card you had, the nomodeset boot option should have worked, since it didn't, theres other things going on. So I'm going to tell you how to get around them...

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-*
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-'uname -r'
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo apt-get update
echo options nouveau modeset=0 > /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau-kms.conf
echo RUN+="/sbin/modprobe nvidia" > /etc/udev/rules.d/90-modprobe.rules
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo reboot
And test.

What all that does, is removes any previous instances of the nvidia driver or it's pieces, makes sure there is a header file there, installs the driver and configures it. It then it straightens out the load order of the files, while updating that to that initial loading image file.

Tell me how it goes.
Same problem but I have a PowerColor ATI HD6850 fanless video card. Could you walk me through the commands to remove prior driver and pieces of ATI, install new driver, configure it, straighten out load order of files, while updating to initial loading image file?

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

[ponsfrilus]

I got this stuck after a X11 update,. Get ride of it by removing xorg.conf
$ sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.old && sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

my 2cents

[vwood]

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-'uname -r'


For clarification: the quotes around


'uname -r'

should be back-quotes. Forum software re-formats them automatically, so be warned that you can't cut-and-paste that line as is

[drs305]

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-'uname -r'


For clarification: the quotes around


'uname -r'

should be back-quotes. Forum software re-formats them automatically, so be warned that you can't cut-and-paste that line as is

I don't think it's the forum per se that reformats the backquotes, as they appear correctly for me when I make a post using them.

You might try adding the tags and insert the command within them to see if the backquotes appear correctly on your system's posts.