URGENT: Unable to load GDM 10.10

[Robbyx]

Through Hardware drivers I deactivated the nvidia proprietary driver with the intention of reactivating it after a reboot. It was supposed to speed up the OS.

An error message arose at the end of the deactivation. I rebooted and now can not load GDM. I am currently using the live CD as I can not access the desktop.

I am able to login to the system.
At the login console I have tried sudo -gdm -restart
Error messsages:
Failed to acquire org.gnome.display manager
Could not acquire name: bailling out.

I had guessed it is something to do with xorg.conf. I can not find a copy at /etc/X11 However I read that xorg.conf has been phased out and I should not need it.

How can I switch the proprietary driver back on in the hard disk when I am running the live disk.

Is there a repair system program?

If that does not work what should I do next to get the GDM to load?



(I hate the idea of having to reinstall and recall hundreds of programs and settings on a clean install.)

Robin

[sikander3786]

Hi.

Boot into recovery mode. You'll need to press and hold Shift key at your Bios screen until you see the Grub menu. Recovery should be the 2nd on the list. You'll then get a choice to reconfigure your graphics. Reconfigure and reboot to see if it helped.

xorg.conf is not needed anymore by modern X. Reconfiguring graphics should do that.

I hope you don't need to reinstall :-)

[Robbyx]

I can not get grub options to load. Despite holding down the shift key, it is bypassed and loads from the HD without giving me the grub options.

It looks as if I will have to do a fresh install:

I have my /home is a separate partition

I am going to back up all of etc when I can work out how to do it from within the live CD. I have a permission problem.

I will also backup /var/cache/apt/archives

Are the software sources in etc?

Should I reformat the boot partition or just point the installer at that partition?


Hope you can comment.

Robin

[houseworkshy]

I think the command would be sudo start gdm rather than sudo -gdm -restart

[sikander3786]

If it is a clean install of 10.10 with Grub2, the Shift key should work. Hope you've tried a couple of times with both Right and Left Shift. You needed to hold it down until you see the menu.



Are the software sources in etc?


Did you add some custom sources, if not then backing up sources.list will be of no use because a new one will be generated at the install.

/etc/apt/sources,list

Custom added PPAs should be in,

/etc/apt/sources.list.d


Should I reformat the boot partition or just point the installer at that partition?

Yes it would be better to format both /boot and / Ubuntu root partition so it doesn't contain any data from the previous install. Clean install makes sense after formatting them

Don't format /home.


I am going to back up all of etc when I can work out how to do it from within the live CD. I have a permission problem.

If your /home is not encrypted, you can just go to terminal and launch nautilus with root permissions and you'll be able to copy any needed stuff.


gksu nautilus

[Robbyx]

Thank you for your comments. I am not finding the solutions easily. If I do one thing it appears blocked by another problem:

Grub

I have failed to get the grub options to load and can not find a control file that I can alter to require the grub options to appear on start up. I think that grub file is missing and that is why SHIFT is not having any effect.

Grup does load as part of the hard disk startup of Ubuntu.

Backing up /etc/

Using gksu nautilus I am not seeing the correct version of /etc/.


I think I am seeing /etc that has been loaded into memory via the live cd.

I can not see the installed installation on the hard disk.



Using places, computer I can see the hard disk with the original installation but can not copy most of the files because of a lack of permission.

Summary: With gksu nautilus I cannot find the files I wish to backup. Without it I can find them but can not copy them.


Live CD installation


As I have not been able to back up the /etc/ directory I have tried to do an installation from the live CD without reformatting the original installation on SDA1.

In the installer I set SDA1 as the boot. (SDA2 is home)

I am unable to proceed because the installer asked for the root to be set within the partition manager. How do I do that? I assume it is SDA1 but I have not noticed how I can designate that drive both as boot and root.

Robin

[sikander3786]

Find your intended partition by


sudo fdisk -l

Create a mount point, I'll be doing this in /media


sudo mkdir /media/ubuntu

Mount your desire partition


sudo mount /dev/sdXX /media/ubuntu

Replace sdXX with whatever your partition e.g, sda1 or sda2 or sdb1 for instance...

Start Nautilus by gksu nautlius, navigate to /media/ubuntu and you'll see your drive, copy over what ever you want to.

You might also find /etc/default/grub and /etc/apt/sources.list in there.

Hope it helps this time.

[Robbyx]

In the installer I set SDA1 as the boot. (SDA2 is home)

I am unable to proceed because the installer asked for the root to be set within the partition manager. How do I do that? I assume it is SDA1 but I have not noticed how I can designate that drive both as boot and root.


Can you comment on the above about setting the root and boot to the same partition?

Thanks for the rest of your answer. I have been able to copy all of /etc/.
/etc/default/grub is missing!

Robin

[sikander3786]

Couldn't quite understand that statement.

If you want your Ubuntu root partition to hold your boot files as well instead of having a separate /boot, just create a / partition during installer and it will happily put your boot files in there.

For more info, please post the output of


sudo fdisk -l

[Robbyx]

Here is my disk setup. Is it saying that I have a separate boot partition? SDA1 seems to be described as both the boot disk and the root.Am I not understanding the output?


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00011035

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3725 29921031 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 3726 7647 31503465 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 7648 60057 420983325 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 60058 60801 5976180 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5 7648 21000 107257941 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 21001 60057 313725321 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdd: 2055 MB, 2055208960 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7840 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa3aa5e04


fstab shows:

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
UUID=3fb00645-ed14-46fa-a0b4-5c384add8c90 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=45a2e92c-c759-4732-9662-988da7f8ea7b /home ext3 nodev,nosuid,relatime 0 2
UUID=e36cb6cf-f372-4418-bd8b-f36a27dc3e76 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
UUID=724E07853D78E7A8 /media/mydocs ntfs user,rw,auto,exec,nls=utf8,unmask=007 0 2
UUID=f35c7bf9-9c2b-4ec9-9522-84d73f3c37db /media/f reiserfs noatime,user,notail,rw 0 0
UUID=7b859c36-c68d-408f-9425-de9f525f3c71 /media/g reiserfs noatime,user,notail,rw 0 0
UUID=86290d05-e673-4310-9f3e-93af30cc13af /media/video reiserfs noatime,user,notail,rw 0 0
UUID=4A16-E85E /media/sda1 vfat
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=126,devmode=664 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /media/sdc1 vfat user,rw,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
localhost:/wuala /home/luzius/wuala/direct nfsdefaults,users,noauto,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,tim eo=60,acregmin=10,noac,intr,nolock,soft

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 1 7840 2007024 e W95 FAT16 (LBA)

Disk /dev/sde: 250.1 GB, 250058301440 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00075fd0

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sde1 1 30401 244196001 fd Linux raid autodetect
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[sikander3786]

Yes seems like sda1 is the separate /boot partition.

What do you want to accomplish now? Reinstall with separate /boot partition? Or just let / handle all that stuff?

[Robbyx]

Yes seems like sda1 is the separate /boot partition.

What do you want to accomplish now? Reinstall with separate /boot partition? Or just let / handle all that stuff?

Unless you advise against it I was trying to install over the top of the existing installation so that I keep as much of my old settings as possible, but replace damaged or missing files. This would mean keeping the setup as it is. Is this possible or should I go for a reformat of the sda1?

When I tried to follow the above over write installation I had the message that it needed a root location and I could not see how to make SDA1 both root and boot. If that is not possible then I will be forced to reformat and create separate boot and root partitions.

[sikander3786]

Unless you advise against it I was trying to install over the top of the existing installation so that I keep as much of my old settings as possible, but replace damaged or missing files. This would mean keeping the setup as it is. Is this possible or should I go for a reformat of the sda1?

I am not sure if it is possible. Not sure either if it is impossible. If you've got the time, you can try yourself and let us know how it goes :-)

To make a partition your / root partition, select Manual partitioning from the installer, highlight your partition and click edit. Select '/' as the mount point and you'r done.

You can do that for /boot, /home etc as well.

If you intend to keep you previous /home drive, you need to specify the mount point same as above.

[Robbyx]

As my system seemed flaky I decided to format the / and put a clean system in it.

1. Sources.list.d

I copied over the old folder that I had backed up. When I go into the update manager I get an error message:


Could not initialise the package information

An unresolvable problem occurred while initialising the package information.

Please report this bug for the 'update-manager' package and try to include the following error message:

'E:Unable to read /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ - opendir (13: Permission denied)'


I have looked at the permissions of the other directories in apt and they are the same as the directory I have copied over. Any ideas how to resolve it? I have looked again and there are some differences and have changed them, but I am concerned at compromising my file integrity and so I am going to do another clean install.

2.Nvidia twin screen

I am not retaining the dual screen settings between boot. Do I have to create an xorg.conf for the settings to be retained?

3. ATA5 SRST failed (error no =-16)

This fault was there before I did the clean install. Any idea what to do to make it go away? It shows up when the the system is rebooted.


Robin