Ubuntu 10 in low-graphics mode

[Dr_Willis]

Ive had the 'going into low graphics mode' issue on and off all during beta testing and now after release. I cant even get it to do it on a regular basis. It will do it one bootup, but not the next 4.

When it Does do it ive noticed i can Go to the console and restart the GDM service and X normally then works corectly.

(from the menu item)

--> Exit to console login.

At the console

sudo service gdm restart

This seems to be an issue with the time it takes the nvidia drivers to load vs the timeouts in the gdm configs. (from what i am finding on other forums)

Most of the fix's ive seen (that may or may not actually work) Involve altering the GDM timeouts in various gdm configs.

One potential fix

in /usr/share/gdm/custom.conf add the 2 lines.

[daemon]
GdmXserverTimeout=30


I have also seen guides that say add these 2 lines to these various files.

/usr/share/gdm/defaults.conf
/etc/gdm/custom.conf

Just to be OVERKILL i added the entries to all 3 files.
So far ive not seen the issue happen again. But only time will tell.
Im not sure if this is a proper fix or there may be better ways. but its a lot less intrusive then removing things and trying the drivers from the nvidia.com site.

I also decided to blacklist the modules listed earlier in this thread.

[Dejavou42]

I can confirm this issue on lucid lynx. I have a nvidia geforce video card, and I get the low graphics mode on every bootup. I tried the suggested fix by Dr_willis, and I still get the same problem. However, after logging in in low graphics mode, I can use sudo service gdm restart, which always allows the nvidia drivers to load. I am going to try changing the timeout of 30 seconds to 60 seconds to see if that fixes my issue.

Edit for new information:

I changed the timeout to 60 seconds instead of thirty, but this did not fix the low graphics mode. I also noticed that the low graphics mode error message has changed a bit. Instead of the normal nvidia drivers error message, I am getting:

Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode

Your screen, graphics card, and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure these yourself.

However, as I said before, restarting gdm fixes this until the next reboot.