big issue - Flashing Gnome desktop and login screen

[carlosgs]

I'm having this problem with Ubuntu 9.10, it has happened the three times I have tried to install it.

I have made a video showing the problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4NkALmkJ6A

After upgrading and rebooting, the flashing login screen appears and it is not possible to use the GDM.
I have tried to install KDM and it works, but when trying to load gnome I get the blinking bars again.

I have also tried this (and got the same problem); installing the Nvidia driver (manufacturer), installing the Nvidia driver (repositories) and installing no screen driver.

I think the problem is with GNOME, and not with the graphics card.

Now I have installed windows xp :-/, for the first time in a whole year, cause it is not possible for me to use Ubuntu 9.10 at all.

I hope this only happens to me.
Hopefully, this will get fixed soon, since the new functions of Ubuntu 9.10 are awesome.

Thanks for your help.

P.S.: If you have the same problem please post it here.

Edit: This is NOT the same problem here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305459

[dstew]

That is a strange problem, I have not seen it before. Did you try to reconfigure gdm?
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdmYou could also try to reconfigure the gnome session manager the same way
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-session

By the way, you say kdm works fine. How do you select kdm vs. gdm? Do you have different grub menu items?

What computer do you have, and what monitor?

[carlosgs]

Thanks for replying :-)


That is a strange problem, I have not seen it before. Did you try to reconfigure gdm? Code:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm
Yes, i had tried that with no result :(


You could also try to reconfigure the gnome session manager the same way Code:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-session
I think i have tried that also, but i'm not sure, i'm going to install 9.10 again in a new partition and check that.


By the way, you say kdm works fine. How do you select kdm vs. gdm? Do you have different grub menu items?I installed kdm by apt-get install kdm, that shows a dialog that lets you select gdm or kdm. (that dialog also appear when dpkg-reconfigure gdm -or kdm-).


What computer do you have, and what monitor? The computer is an Acer Aspire X1700, the monitor is a PROVIEW 700p

I'm going to try the dpkg-reconfigure gnome-session

Thanks for your help ;)

[carlosgs]

Ok so sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-session did not worked :-(

Waiting for more help

[dstew]

I'm sorry I don't have more ideas for you. You might try posting on the Multimedia & Video or the Desktop Environments forums. They are pretty active and people that troll those forums may have more expertise in strange video problems.

[carlosgs]

OK thanks anyway :-)
I'm going to try to re-download and burn in a CD ubuntu 9.10, just in case it was a problem with the CD.

Thanks again

[carlosgs]

Ok, I have reinstalled it (finally I did not made a new cd)
-now using it-
tried to reboot a few times with the fresh install with no problems
now updating&upgrading (without installing anything else -no screen drivers-)

if it fails again, the problem will be in the xorg server update probably :-S

cheers ;-)

[carlosgs]

OK, now I rebooted and it went fine
maybe the problem was that I installed the nvidia drivers before upgrading, no idea :-S

Im going to reboot a few more times and then install the nvidia drivers from System->Administration->Hardware Drivers.

hope it works now :-)

BTW, the migration assistant for firefox (from Windows) didnt worked, maybe because there is a password in the windows partition and it wasnt mounted

[carlosgs]

Ok, so rebooted 2 times and it worked OK
now downloading and installing the nvidia drivers... [-o< xD

[carlosgs]

Rebooted and... works!
Let's see if it survives 2 more reboots lol (I think i'm a bit paranoic with this lol)

[dstew]

Thanks for finishing off the thread.

[vitiate]

I had this exact same problem but I was able to resolve it without reinstalling everything. After looking at this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6103702 I looked in /usr/local/lib and realized I had installed freetype's libraries that I had compiled the day before. These were conflicting somehow and now that they are gone the log in screen works fine.

[carlosgs]

Damn!
the problem is back :-(
Updated this morning, rebooted and then again a flashing white rectangle instead of the login box.

I don't know what to do now (I didn't disabled the nvidia drivers before the update :-S)

Please help me with this :-(

[carlosgs]

Switching to Debian
Hope it is useful
Thanks for your help anyway ;)

[carlosgs]

Ok so I tested Ubuntu Studio 9.10 and didn't have the problem until installing a newer linux image & headers.
After that it was just the same...

[noabody]

Thanks vitiate, I had compiled freetype from source because it is required to compile OpenPS2Loader. The computer worked fine for several days and then all of a suddent this cropped up.

After I deleted (sudo rm /usr/local/lib/freetype*.*) the problem was gone. The only thing is, I have Ubuntu Lucid installed and booting from an external hard disk so I don't know if moving from one computer to another affected it somehow. The last program I used before everything went to crap was Firefox. Maybe a web page prompted a freetype library to be loaded and that touched everything off.