Can now start GUI after install

[Martin_sensei]

I hope someone can help...

I have just installed Ubuntu 9.10 from fresh (I formatted a partition and installed it there) The partition is 10GB so I believe it is enough for Ubuntu.

So I booted the live CD, then installed Ubuntu from the live session, everything went well, the install finished and I rebooted.

After the reboot I ended up with a shell prompt which flickers very badly I doesn't hear all my keystrokes, so it it impossible to log in.

It basically is a black screen with the following:

Ubuntu 9.10 martin-desktop tty1
martin-desktop login:

Any ideas what has gone wrong? Or how to get out of this?
I can also boot in recovery mode, which gives me the same login prompt but no flickering, and still no GUI.

It is an older PC but nothing fancy:
Asus A8N SLi motherboard
AMD 64 3200
2GB DDR RAM
2 160GB Maxtor HDDs
NVidia 9600 GT
Creative Soundblaster Audigy

[Regele IONESCU]

I made a fresh install too on an Acer Aspire 9423wsmi laptop, after I installed Windwos7. When I try to boot I get the same flickering black screen with tty1 and login lines. I hardly manage to type the username, but when it comes to password it types nothing.

[ratcheer]

After the reboot I ended up with a shell prompt which flickers very badly I doesn't hear all my keystrokes, so it it impossible to log in.

It basically is a black screen with the following:

Ubuntu 9.10 martin-desktop tty1
martin-desktop login:

Any ideas what has gone wrong? Or how to get out of this?
I can also boot in recovery mode, which gives me the same login prompt but no flickering, and still no GUI.



I am having the exact same problem. We really need some help.

Thanks,
Tim

[emigrant]

in tty1
login with the username/password you gave during the installation.
then give:


sudo killall gdmthen


sudo gdm

[mshannon]

Same problem here after an upgrade prompted by upgrade manager, everything went OK until after reboot. Unable to log in due to the screen flicker as it's not possible to tell if you have typed in the password correctly. For example my user name is "mick" but due to the screen flashing it does not always accept the keystrokes therefore have several atemps so get things like "mmmik" "ick" etc.

[Martin_sensei]

in tty1
login with the username/password you gave during the installation.
then give:


sudo killall gdmthen


sudo gdm

Thanks for your help. I tried this and got the following:

** (gdm-binary:1757):WARNING ** Could not acquire name; bailing out

What was this supposed to do?

Cheers

[Martin_sensei]

I read somewhere that we need to update the nvidia drivers, but I have got no idea how to do this from a recovery command prompt session!

I have downloaded the drivers on the windows partition but I can not see this or mount the disk from the recovery prompt.

[Martin_sensei]

Hello all,

I sorted this! I managed to mount a usb stick with the new nvidia drivers



mkdir myusb
sudo mount /dev/sdc1
sudo chmod +x myusb/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run
sudo /myusb/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run


Followed the prompts and it all worked.

[Chow7]

Hello all,

I sorted this! I managed to mount a usb stick with the new nvidia drivers



mkdir myusb
sudo mount /dev/sdc1
sudo chmod +x myusb/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run
sudo /myusb/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run


Followed the prompts and it all worked.

I put the driver on a USB stick but when I type sudo mount /dev/sdc1 it says it can't find it.

[Chow7]

Updating the nvidia driver fixed it!!

[Crimson_Tider]

Hello all,

I sorted this! I managed to mount a usb stick with the new nvidia drivers



mkdir myusb
sudo mount /dev/sdc1
sudo chmod +x myusb/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run
sudo /myusb/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-185.18.36-pkg1.run


Followed the prompts and it all worked.



I am having the same problem; how can I find out what kind of video card I have so that I can get the right driver? I am a newbie and don't know how to do this from a command prompt.

[Martin_sensei]

Have you got Windows installed too? The windows device manager will tell you (hopefully) about the card.

Otherwise, open up the case and have a peek... The card model should be stamped on the graphics card somewhere, (my older ATI card had a sticked on the underside with the model and make, my NVIDIa card has the model number in big letters printed on the heatsink).

[Crimson_Tider]

Have you got Windows installed too? The windows device manager will tell you (hopefully) about the card.

Otherwise, open up the case and have a peek... The card model should be stamped on the graphics card somewhere, (my older ATI card had a sticked on the underside with the model and make, my NVIDIa card has the model number in big letters printed on the heatsink).

I don't have Windows, and I'm fairly certain without getting into the computer that it is an onboard video adapter. I mis-spoke when I used the term "video card."

[oldos2er]

I am having the same problem; how can I find out what kind of video card I have so that I can get the right driver? I am a newbie and don't know how to do this from a command prompt.


lspci | grep VGA should show you what you need to know.

[Crimson_Tider]

lspci | grep VGA should show you what you need to know.

Okay, I did that and found out that I have an Intel 82845G integrated. I went to the Intel site to download the driver, and it says that I should obtain "precompiled driver packages from my Linux distribution vendor." So where do I get these?

Sorry to be such a pain!

[Martin_sensei]

Ah,

I'm affaid I don't know much about the intel drivers as I have only set up ATI and NVIDIA cards before.

I did find this webpage which links to some downloadable intel drivers. Perhaps worth a try:

http://intellinuxgraphics.org/download.html

Sorry I can't be of more help!

[Crimson_Tider]

Ah,

I'm affaid I don't know much about the intel drivers as I have only set up ATI and NVIDIA cards before.

I did find this webpage which links to some downloadable intel drivers. Perhaps worth a try:

http://intellinuxgraphics.org/download.html

Sorry I can't be of more help!

The page at that link says

"Compiling and/or upgrading graphics drivers in Linux is a complex and error-prone task. Here is a user guide for how to build the driver from scratch. If you are not experienced doing this, we recommend that you get precompiled packages from one of the many Linux distributions."

That's definitely referring to me.

I found a driver at

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=8203&ProdId=865&lang=eng

but it has a date of 2004, so I bet that won't help me.

[Martin_sensei]

Ah, sorry!

Well it may be worth giving the ones from Intel a go, so you can at least startup x.

[SL666]

I had this issue also,

solved by installing the restricted drivers for my video card (nvidia 8800gt) - package is nvidia-glx-180.

I then also had to rebuild my xorg.conf as nvidia-settings would crash when trying to save the settings (i run two screens) so i had to run nvidia-xconfig to replace the xorg.conf.

this solved my issues.

[Crimson_Tider]

Ah, sorry!

Well it may be worth giving the ones from Intel a go, so you can at least startup x.

Okay, so I downloaded the driver (the one from 2004) to my USB drive. How do I install that driver from the command prompt? I know I need to mount the USB drive first, right? And to do that, I've got to find out what my device is named in the filesystem, right?

So, I tried

sudo fdisk -l
and it told me my USB device is recognized as /dev/sdb1.

Okay, so then I tried

sudo mkdir /media/external
so that I would have a directory to mount it to, but the response I get is
"mkdir:cannot create directory '/media/external':read-only file system"

What do I do from here? Keep in mind that I'm a newbie and I'm not totally certain of what I'm doing here.

[Martin_sensei]

That's a bit strange. How have you logged on? I booted into Ubuntu 9.10 recovery mode, then did a resume normal boot.

That took me to a tty1 login prompt (but without the flickering).

I logged in as me, then I was able to create a directory in /media and mount my usb stick.

Cheers

Martin

[Martin_sensei]

Also check the output of "mount"

Is your linux partition ext4 (or FAT, or NTFS)? Does the output show any "ro" flags? This would mean the partition is read only.

[Crimson_Tider]

Also check the output of "mount"

Is your linux partition ext4 (or FAT, or NTFS)? Does the output show any "ro" flags? This would mean the partition is read only.

Output of mount:

/dev/sda1 on / type ext3(rw, relatime, errors=remount-ro

Then it has several more lines that all have the form

"none on" something, something, something "(rw)" or "(rw, something)"

Of course, when I use the word something above, I'm just talking about several different directories or whatever.