Today's update broke the GUI

[syntaxerrorsix2]

I installed today's update for 20.04.1 and now the only function I have is the ability to move the mouse cursor. The screen flickers a bit and the clock is locked up. I can get to tty4 and get CL and have done a complete update again and again with no improvement.

I've tried a clean re-install from a USB stick as well.

The video card is an Intel Corp Xeon Es-1200 so no nvidia issues.

I've got a back-up but it does me no good as I can't run and I don't even know if that will fix anything.

I'm at a complete loss, any help would be appreciated.



Ok, it was the new kernel. Old kernel works fine.

[CelticWarrior]

It seems to be a problem with the recently introduced 5.8 series kernel in Ubuntu 20.04.
I had to solve a similar problem with a customer's miniPC also with Intel graphics.

The only way was to find an old 20.04 installer, not the 20.04.1, as that guarantees it stays on the 5.4 series.

[ajgreeny]

There's no need to reinstall as CW seems to be implying; you can do the same thing by following the suggestion below.

Reboot to the earlier 5.4.0-60 kernel, or whichever version you have, then run commands

sudo apt update && sudo apt purge linux-image-generic-5.8.0-36 linux-generic-hwe-20.04 && sudo apt install linux-generic

Copy that command to make sure you get it correct as it's easy to miss-type such a long command.
That will remove the current 5.8. problem kernel (hence your need to firstly boot to the older 5.4 kernel from grub) and will remove also the current linux-generic-hwe-20.04 package that will otherwise continue to call for and install the most recent 5.8 version.
Some of those 5.8 kernels may turn out to be good working ones, but if you do not specifically need them for very recent hardware support I suspect the 5.4 series will be fine; it is also fully supported right through to 2025 when Ubuntu 20.04 loses support.

[Autodave]

E: Unable to locate package linux-image-generic-5.8.0-36

Thanks ajgreeny. I did that and got the error message above. Ignore it?

[CelticWarrior]

Find out which one of the 5.8 kernel versions you have now, uninstall that instead.

[ajgreeny]

It looks as if there has been another 5.8.0-38 kernel released today, so try that and you may find that all is well again; this kernel version has arrived only a few days after the "broken" 5.8.0-36.

With luck this one will work as expected rather than give so many users difficulties of many kinds.

[farlander762]

sudo apt update && sudo apt purge linux-image-5.8.0-34-generic linux-generic-hwe-20.04 && sudo apt purge linux-image-unsigned-5.8.0-36-generic linux-generic-hwe-20.04 && sudo apt purge linux-image-unsigned-5.8.0-38-generic linux-generic-hwe-20.04 && sudo apt install linux-generic

Try this. I've checked the kernel package names and included all three 5.8 kernels I have seen so far. If your machine doesn't have one or more of these it will ignore them.

BTW, this will list he installed kernels by name so you can get them exactly correct:

dpkg --list | grep linux-image

[ml9104]

I just did an update/upgrade which resulted in 5.4.0-62 as kernel. Rock stable and functional.
Perhaps you should remove the "load bleeding edge kernel" flag from your update manager?

[Autodave]

I just did an update/upgrade which resulted in 5.4.0-62 as kernel. Rock stable and functional.
Perhaps you should remove the "load bleeding edge kernel" flag from your update manager?

"Load bleeding edge kernel"....are you being funny or is that actually an option in Ubuntu? There is no such option in Xubuntu.

[davehk]

It is happening even if that is NOT set. My bog standard 20.04 (i.e. installed as the original 20.04 and updated by SW updater, not the later .1 installation image) installation has had two versions of the 5.8 kernel installed by SW updater, as I discovered when Ubuntu's VirtualBox would not run. Because there had been two 5.8 (5.8.0-34 and -36) updates, I had no 5.4 kernel installed to fall back on. Fortunately Oracle's latest release of VB works fine with the new kernel.

I see that -38 has now been released - don't know if that fixes the issue.