No desktop

[Russ_H]

My sons unity interface stopped working on 12.04 LTS, he is young and is prone to not shutting it down properly, I tried reinstalling gdm via this advice which described the problem

http://askubuntu.com/questions/14160...ics-mode-error

However apart from one boot up correctly which failed after I set it to autologin its got a bit worse. I can see the command line OK, so its not damaged and it boots up ok via a USB Ubuntu stick and to add insult to injury its dual boot and Vista is fine, now when I try and manually start lightdm I get

(Hardware RNG device inode not found.


"/etc/rc2.d/S21_rng-tools: Cannot find a hardware RNG device to use")

Any ideas?, I tried re installing the rng generator.

[schragge]

Try to uninstall it?

sudo apt-get purge rng-tools

[grahammechanical]

I am confused.

The link that you provided gives different suggestions on what to try when the OS loads in low graphics mode. Is that your problem? You do not say so. You say the Unity interface stopped working. That is a different problem from low graphics mode.

Another thing, Ubuntu uses LightDM (Display Manager) as the login screen. But you say that you tried reinstalling GDM (Gnome Display Manager). But Ubuntu does not use GDM. So, why try to reinstall it?

You need to give a better description of "Unity interface stopped working." What are the signs and symptions?

Do you see a Grub boot menu? Try selecting Recovery mode and then selecting Resume. If that gets you to a desktop open Additional Drivers and try using another driver.

How old is your son? Is he old enough to have administrator privileges? If he has administrator privileges then I suspect that he has done more than just hit the power off button. I have found Linux to be very resilient.

Regards.

[Russ_H]

I am confused.

The link that you provided gives different suggestions on what to try when the OS loads in low graphics mode. Is that your problem? You do not say so. You say the Unity interface stopped working. That is a different problem from low graphics mode.

Another thing, Ubuntu uses LightDM (Display Manager) as the login screen. But you say that you tried reinstalling GDM (Gnome Display Manager). But Ubuntu does not use GDM. So, why try to reinstall it?

You need to give a better description of "Unity interface stopped working." What are the signs and symptions?

Do you see a Grub boot menu? Try selecting Recovery mode and then selecting Resume. If that gets you to a desktop open Additional Drivers and try using another driver.

How old is your son? Is he old enough to have administrator privileges? If he has administrator privileges then I suspect that he has done more than just hit the power off button. I have found Linux to be very resilient.

Regards.

Well the symptoms are instead of the Unity Interface I get the error message as mentioned. The problem initially started as the low graphics problem as mentioned and after trying to deinstall and reinstall everything changed to the one I now have, which is the cryptic, to me, message

"(Hardware RNG device inode not found.


"/etc/rc2.d/S21_rng-tools: Cannot find a hardware RNG device to use")

My son does not have admin rights and grub does work as I would not have been able to boot Vista or reinstall anything under the command line as mentioned.

[Russ_H]

Try to uninstall it?

sudo apt-get purge rng-tools

Will try that tomorrow, thanks.

[Russ_H]

Will try that tomorrow, thanks.

No luck, reinstalled it and when it tries to start I get:

"Starting Hardware RNG entropy gatherer daemon: (failed).

Attempting to get it to start manually does the same thing,

I tried the advice given in

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...pg/+bug/706011

But it still fails

[Russ_H]

Reinstalling the xserver had no effect.

[Russ_H]

Tried reinstalling gdm, which will not run and lightdm, which will not run. Is there any way of re-installing the entire graphics system?

[Russ_H]

Hi,

Desktop on sons machine stopped loading, it came up with a "Low Graphics Mode" but would not enter Low graphics but gave an error

(Hardware RNG device inode not found.


"/etc/rc2.d/S21_rng-tools: Cannot find a hardware RNG device to use")

Ctrl-Alt-F1 drops to the terminal.

This seemed closest to the error

http://askubuntu.com/questions/14160...ics-mode-error

I have tried reinstalling lightdm, tried gdm which worked once and then failed when I set it to autologin, tried reininstalling rng-tools.

It runs fine from a USB stick, IBM T500 laptop BTW, Vista works OK so its not hardware, is there any way I can copy the files from the USB stick that work to the PC that doesn't. Or is there anything else I can try to get this running?

[steeldriver]

Why exactly do you need rng-tools? it's not part of the standard desktop installation afaik

Did you try purging and NOT reinstalling it? at least just as a check that it is the real issue