Text invisible, white on white: 12.04LTS upgrade unuseable

**bogan** · April 26th, 2012

re INVISIBLE TEXT after 12.04 upgrade from 11.10

After a remarkably trouble-free Update Manager up-grade to the newly released 12.04 3.2.0-23-generic - the download estimated at 38 minutes took just under an hour, and Installation estimated at 3 Hours 20 minutes, also took just under an hour - the only fault was a message just before the log-in screen, saying: "could not write bytes: broken pipe".

After reinstalling the nvidia 295.33 driver using:

Code:

nvidia-installer -f

the only installation problem was the Grub menu - and Grub Customizer - had duplicate entries that I could not delete, only hide.

Virtually all my settings and applications survived OK, except for 'Ubuntu-Tweak' which is not shown in Ubuntu Software center.

That is the GOOD news.

However, there is one major difficulty that makes it virtually unusable!! The text display in most windows varies from off-white on a light gray background - just readable - to white on white, or gray on gray - totally invisible.

All the settings windows in System Settings and CCSM, for instance, or the Home folder display, are only readable after Mouse clicking on them to select.

In Gedit, I am typing this after using Edit>Preferences to change to a near black background so the white text is visible; WHILST TO SAVE THE FILE I HAD TO TYPE ITS NAME COMPLETELY BLIND.

Luckily, I have the Classic-Indicator and its display is white on black, so I was able to search through all the configuration preferences, but was unable to find anything other than for Gedit.

Surely this can not be intended, yet I have seen no mention of such things in the Ubuntu +1 testers forum.

Will someone please tell me what ought to be obvious; how do I reset the general text colour/background to make things readable??

Hopefully.

Chao!, bogan.

Edit: PS. I did have one " Sorry 12.04 LTS has encountered an error" message.

**cariboo** · April 27th, 2012

Open a terminal and type:

Code:

sudo apt-get -f install

it looks like your upgrade didn't finish.

**jadtech** · April 27th, 2012

well even more maybe someone else can answer this I could be wrong but
kernel 3.2.0-23 is 12.04 beta 2 the last beta kernel ..

maybe just because I was using beta but the kernel I installed was 3.2.0-24

**bogan** · April 27th, 2012

Hi!. cariboo907,

Thanks for your reply.

When the initial upgrade was complete - there were no error messages - I rebooted, fixed the video driver and ran Update Manager again, there was only one minor update.

This morning I ran:

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

and it installed a few packages, mostly a Firefox upgrade. Another reboot and I ran your code:

Code:

 sudo apt-get -f install
  .....one libcxx file replaced .....
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libunity6 screen-resolution-extra
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
.....
 sudo apt-get autoremove
The following packages will be REMOVED
  libunity6 screen-resolution-extra

Result: Still the same 'white on white' text.

@jadtech,

Thanks for your tip, I should have noticed, from 'uname -a', that 3.2.0-23 was dated April 10, whereas 3.2.0-24 is dated April 25.

I re-ran Update Manager - which did not show: "12.04 LTS upgrade available" - and it offered the whole eight 12.04 kernal, image and header files.

Installed them and re-booted. Result: Still the same 'White on White', and the "could not write bytes: broken pipe" message is still there.

uname now shows:

Code:

 uname -a
Linux alan-MS-7318 3.2.0-24-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 25 08:43:52 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Any one got any other ideas ??

Chao!, bogan.

**bogan** · April 27th, 2012

Update: Fri /27/04/12 pm.

To eliminate the chance that this 'White on White' is connected with the current problems with nvidia driver 295.xx, I downloaded the biuld-esstential and compiling tools, uninstalled & remove purged the 295.33 driver and installed 290.10.

Result: Still the same as before, no change.

There is some good news amongst the bad: my Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2501/RT2573 Wireless Adapter has connected and worked immediately, every reboot - so far - and even reconnects on recover from Suspend. Things it never did reliably right back to Ubuntu 9.1.

The Desktop, Plymouth log-in window and Terminal windows have text/backgrounds that are legible: Firefox and LibreOffice are black on white or near-white, so things are not totally unusable, but very difficult: Gedit is the only one that I have been able to find Preferences to permit changing the background color.

Can anyone tell me if there are 'Themes' that change window backgounds or text colour??

Chao!, bogan.

**bogan** · April 27th, 2012

Hi!, All.

Posted by bogan:

Can anyone tell me if there are 'Themes' that change window backgounds or text colour??

Answering my own query: I added the tualatrix ppa and installed Ubuntu-Tweak v7.0.

Altering the Gtk theme to 'Radiance' and the Window theme to 'Dust Sand', gave me a good compromise between visibility and contrast.

Result: Problem Solved !!
EDIT: You can also do the same thing in Dash>Advanced Settings>Theme.

Chao!, bogan.