Upgraded 16.04 two days ago: Now no graphical interface after user login

[richgil2]

I was offered an auto upgrade by the software manager and accepted it. It ran without producing obvious error messages. After reboot I get the graphical login prompt. The login does not complete but halts.

I can obtain a virtual terminal with Ctrl-Alt-F1 and login there without error. I saw a similar query on the forum which suggested that the ~/.Xauthority owner/group might need to be altered from root/root. The owner/group was root/root and I have altered it.

Unfortunately that has not fixed the problem.

I would be grateful for any suggestions to investigate and fix the problem

[mörgæs]

Hi, welcome to the fora.

How does 18.04 work in a live boot?

[richgil2]

Thank you very much for your reply. I will try that version. Since posting I have found that 'Ubuntu advanced options' on the boot menu contains about a dozen boot versions, each of which has sub-options generic, upstart and recovery. At least two of the recovery sub-options give me a graphical log in and then give me a working GUI. I don't know why ubuntu provides all these options or how they differ but as I can now run a GUI when logged in, I'm happy. Could anyone point me towards any documentation about this? Thanks

[mörgæs]

It's a list of old kernels and they are kept for troubleshooting a situation like this.

You can of course use an old kernel but be aware that new kernels are released for a reason, often for fixing a security bug. General rule: The further from the latest you go the higher the risk.

Is using recovery mode for the latest kernel enough?

[richgil2]

The latest kernel I have is initrd.img-4.15.0-32 and in recovery mode that gives me a user graphical interface. In future I will not use the software manager update/upgrade option but will try testing live DVDs as they become available. Many thanks.

[mörgæs]

Good, you can delete the old unneeded kernels with the command

sudo apt autoremove

If you have a dozen of them you will free at least 3 GiB of space.

[richgil2]

Many thanks.

I've just run apt --dry-run autoremove and it's proposing to remove a few other files too, so I should recover a bit more space.

[mörgæs]

In future I will not use the software manager update/upgrade option but will try testing live DVDs as they become available.

I guess that I understand but just to be sure: I recommend that you update (within release number) every day but when you eventually want to upgrade to a new release I suggest that you do a fresh install.