12.10 3.5.0-17-generic - No login screen

[markus79]

Hi,

I upgraded to 12.10 a few days ago. All was well, but looks like an interrupted updated caused problems.

When I boot the comp, I get random "" characters all over the screen. Then I get a few lines "KVM: Disabled by Bios". After that the screen goes black, and the keyboard no longer works. I never get any kind of login screen. (I'm not trying to use KVM anyways)

I SSH into the comp, and its up and running via SSH. Its just never letting me see the login ui screen to start the desktop environment. I tried 'gdm' but it doesn't work, i imagine because I can only call it over a SSH terminal and not on the actual comp itself.

I've been able to get all my updates completed, so I'm stuck on what to do next.

Thanks
Markus

[markus79]

Looks like it has something to do with GDM or lightdm. I re-installed Xorg which prompted me which I would rather use, gdm or lightdm. Choosing gdm at least brought me to a text-based login. Then I tried to run lightdm and it crashed on me again giving me a blank black screen.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

sudo service lightdm start
you may need to use nomodeset in your boot line from grub

sudo sed -i 's/quiet splash/quite splash nomodeset/' /etc/default/grub;sudo update-grub;sudo reboot

undo:

sudo sed -i 's/ nomodeset//' /etc/default/grub;sudo update-grub;sudo reboot

alot of people think the 3.6.1 kernel is better than 3.5 one [link to post with install script]
it is a shot in the dark but it may help, more likely a gpu driver issue, which card/driver are you using?

[markus79]

Thanks for the code, but what exactly am I supposed to do with it?

Am I supposed to run both lines of code you have in order, or make a change to a grub config file?

thanks

[markus79]

I'm using NVIDIA Corporation GF104 [GeForce GTX 460]

This is what lspci says:

03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF104 [GeForce GTX 460] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 24
Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
Memory at d8000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
Memory at d4000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
I/O ports at cc00 [size=128]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at fbc00000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nvidia_current, nouveau, nvidiafb

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

Thanks for the code, but what exactly am I supposed to do with it?

Am I supposed to run both lines of code you have in order, or make a change to a grub config file?

thanks

line 1 makes the changes to grub for you, line 2 undoes the change if you need to revert it

[markus79]

I also tried booting from 12.04 disc - I get to the Menu of options, but then when I click anything 'try w/o installing', 'install' etc, it goes black with random "" characters on the screen.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

use the edit option and add nomodeset at the boot menu