No command prompt after login on Server 10.04

[jenx2seven]

Hi,

I have upgraded my ubuntu server install from 9.10 to 10.04 with no problems.

Now when I boot up I am presented with the login prompt where I put my username and password in. I am told when I last logged in and then nothing - just a flashing cursor. No prompt to enter any commands. I can type at the cursor but nothing happens.

Any ideas?


Apart from this the server appears to be running fine - MySQL/Apache are doing their stuff.

[whoop]

Do you have ssh service running? Does that work?
Does any other tty work (for example Ctlr+Alt+F3)?

[sylvester_0]

Try pressing Ctrl-C. It sounds like one of the "pretty" login scripts (X updates available etc) is getting hung up. Are you able to login with another user?

[jenx2seven]

Try pressing Ctrl-C. It sounds like one of the "pretty" login scripts (X updates available etc) is getting hung up. Are you able to login with another user?

Excellent. Pressing Ctrl-C a few times got me to a prompt. Thanks for that.

Now - any clue how I go about fixing this? How do I find what's hanging? Can you tell I'm a little green to this ;)

[sylvester_0]

It appears that the MOTD is generated from the scripts in /etc/update-motd.d I'd recommend going into that directory and running them one by one to see which one is breaking and debug from there. Good luck!


user@netbook:~$ cd /etc/update-motd.d/
user@netbook:/etc/update-motd.d$ ls
00-header 20-cpu-checker 91-release-upgrade 99-footer
10-help-text 90-updates-available 98-reboot-required
user@netbook:/etc/update-motd.d$ ./00-header
Linux netbook 2.6.32-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 16 08:10:02 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
user@netbook:/etc/update-motd.d$ ./10-help-text

Welcome to Ubuntu!
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/
user@netbook:/etc/update-motd.d$
etc...

[tgalati4]

From the command line while logged in:

sudo apt-get update

Then try ssh and see if it takes longer. Take a stopwatch and time it. We need some data.

[jenx2seven]

Back again,

It appears that its the 90-updates-available motd script that is hanging. Anyone have any ideas as to why?

Thanks

[davidshere]

Wow... this has made my lucid box a hockey puck. Control-C doesn't do anything -- I don't even get a login screen. I can't load in safe mode because grub doesn't give me a menu. Yay.

[MianoSM]

Not sure if this is a help at all, but I recently did a minimal install and found that the landscape-client and landscape-common packages were not included.

Perhaps that might be a more preferred route to take in the future (sorry it doesn't help at the moment, I would suggest modifying the directory/files so that they don't get modified, or removing the above packages).