10.04 -> 10.10: horrific mess

[lawlorc]

I am now into hour thirteen of attempting to sort this out, so forgive me if it's incoherent.

For various reasons, I abandoned a laptop that was running 9.04 last year and decided this morning to dust it off again. I managed to stepping-stone my way from 9.04 to 9.10 to 10.04 but haven't been able to make the final leap to 10.10 for whatever reason (at one point, I believe she was complaining that her "installed packages had unmet dependencies"). Anyway, I've been frantically googling and trying various fixes, all to no avail. Now, all of a sudden, when I boot up I get a purplish screen with a dodgy-looking 'Ubuntu 10.04' on it in an oldschool terminal-esque font, four reddish dots flickering beneath it. Then it moves on to a completely blank black screen, no cursor, nothing.

I've tried hitting ESC from Bios and using a different kernel - all that does is give me a more legitimate looking Ubuntu logo before the black screen. Occasionally, it says something about mounting drives and offers me an option of hitting 'M' for manual intervention or 'S' to skip the whole thing. Ultimately, I end up at the same black screen.

I thought booting from a 10.10 cd might let me install it as if nothing had ever happened (there's no precious data on the laptop), but no dice. In desperation, I turned to a Windows XP installation disc but that refuses to work either. I can worm my way into a root shell just after start-up, but I have no idea what to do once I'm in there. (Disclosure: I know very little about computers.)

Any help at all would be massively appreciated.

[tommcd]

I am now into hour thirteen of attempting to sort this out, so forgive me if it's incoherent.

For various reasons, I abandoned a laptop that was running 9.04 last year and decided this morning to dust it off again. I managed to stepping-stone my way from 9.04 to 9.10 to 10.04 but haven't been able to make the final leap to 10.10 for whatever reason ...
This is why I always do clean installs of Ubuntu. I never do dist-upgrades.
You have spent 13+ hours trying to sort this out. This likely does not include the time you spent dist-upgrading from 9.04 > 10.10.
You can do a clean install Ubuntu in less than 30 minutes. It may take another hour, at the most, to reinstall the programs you use and set the system up the way you want it. In short, doing a clean install would be the most productive use of your time. If you did have problems with a clean install, at least you would be starting with a clean slate. This makes problems easier to solve, since there will be no detritus left over from older versions of Ubuntu to complicate things.

You should have a separate home partition to make reinstalling Ubuntu easier. If you do not have a separate home partition, here is how to create one during installation:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome
And welcome to the Ubuntu forums!

[lawlorc]

Thanks so much for your reply!

My hard drive is unpartitioned and unfortunately I never get as far as the installation wizard when booting from the 10.10 cd, so I can't follow your link's instructions. Is there any way to wipe the system from root and then try to boot from the cd?

[coffeecat]

My hard drive is unpartitioned and unfortunately I never get as far as the installation wizard when booting from the 10.10 cd

Do you mean that the 10.10 disc never finishes booting? Do you get to the point where you are given the choice of starting the installer or trying the live desktop? Can you get to the live desktop from there? If not, I suspect this might be a conflict in 10.10 with your particular hardware. Post some details of your hardware, particularly the video chipset.

[lawlorc]

When I attempt to boot from the 10.10 disc I get as far as a purple screen. After a while some icons appear in the upper right hand corner (i.e. wireless connections etc.), but nothing beyond that. The mouse pointer remains a spinning disc and everything else is frozen.

When I boot from the hard drive, on which 10.04 had been running ok, I get the black screen. Before this started happening, I had been attempting to update to 10.10 through both the update manager and then terminal when that failed. Then I read somewhere that the problem might be to do with un-updated packages in package manager (can't remember if that's exactly what it's called?), so I had updated those and rebooted as (as far as I recall) required.

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1150. All I can find out re. video is:
Video
Graphics Processor / Vendor Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Shared video memory (UMA)
Video Memory 64.0 MB

[coffeecat]

My guess is that the live CD and the (partly) updated 10.04 on your hard drive are suffering from the same issue. I know there is a problem with some older Intel graphics chipsets and 10.10 which is solvable with an option added to grub at bootup. Frustratingly, I cannot find the link at the moment. I'll post back if I do, or perhaps someone else may be able to give a lead.

[lawlorc]

Thank you so much. Really appreciate your help.

[theozzlives]

There is a way to wipe the drive, but if it's a conflict, you're still gonna have problems. Why don't you download the gparted live CD, clear all your partitions, and try the 10.10 CD. If there's still conflicts 10.04.1 LTS is very close and supported for three years.

[coffeecat]

@lawlorc, this isn't really what I was looking for, but it gives a lead.

http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2010/05/06/ubuntu-10-04-lucid-blank-screen-at-startup-workaround/

I think there are two options to try. From you hard drive install, if you don't normally see a grub menu, press shift to get the menu. Highlight the first boot option and then 'e' to edit. In the linux line add 'i915.modeset=1' or 'i915.modeset=0' at the end. You might have to try both, one at a time. Now ctrl-X to boot.

For the live CD, start up and when you get the two small icons at bottom of screen, tap the spacebar. Select your language and then press F6 to add an option. I'm going from memory here, so I can't remember the exact sequence, but you need to add one of those modeset strings to the boot options.

If either get you successfully into a usable desktop, then there is a way of making this permanent.

[Rubi1200]

Hi lawlorc,

There are 2 links for Intel chipsets and recent Ubuntu versions:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Lucidi8xxFreezes
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Mavericki8xxStatus

I hope this is what coffeecat was looking for and that it helps you get things going.

[coffeecat]

There are 2 links for Intel chipsets and recent Ubuntu versions:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Lucidi8xxFreezes
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Mavericki8xxStatus

I hope this is what coffeecat was looking for and that it helps you get things going.

Thanks Rubi1200. That's spot on! Those were the links I was thinking of but couldn't find. I've done a bit of googling and the "Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Shared video memory" of the Dell Inspiron 1150 seems to be "Intel 82855 GME graphics", so I'm optimistic those links address the problem.

[lawlorc]

Hello again,

Since my last visit, I have used BootIt to clear the decks and start from scratch and reinstalled XP Home just to have something to fall back on.

After multiple attempts to boot up from both 10.04 and 10.10 cds, I'm finally in after using Rubi1200's recommended fix for 10.04, but on 10.10. I'm only in trial from cd mode though, so we shall see how I fare with the actual installation!

Thank you all so much for your time and effort in tracking down a solution for me. I really appreciate it.

[Rubi1200]

You are more than welcome :-)

Let us know how it goes or if you need any other help.

[tommcd]

After multiple attempts to boot up from both 10.04 and 10.10 cds, I'm finally in after using Rubi1200's recommended fix for 10.04, but on 10.10. I'm only in trial from cd mode though, so we shall see how I fare with the actual installation!

If booting the Ubuntu 10.10 live CD with the boot option i915.modeset=1 or i915.modeset=0 worked for you, then after you install Ubuntu 10.10, if you still have problems booting to the desktop, you can try booting to recovery mode and add the appropriate boot option to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" line (in between the quotation marks) to the: /etc/default/grub file as discussed here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#/etc/default/grub%20%28file%29
Then be sure to run:
sudo update-grub to update your: /boot/grub/grub.cfg file so that this boot option takes effect on the next boot.
Write back if you need more help with this.
Glad you have made some progress!