The problem that I am having is on Xubuntu 20.04. Since approximately last week Wednesday, or even a little earlier, the machine, when rebooted, gets to the end of the boot process, flashes a text console with the filesystem attributes, then switches to a graphical console showing a black screen with a mouse cursor, and then endlessly cycles between the two. After several times rebooting it, including multiple times into rescue mode, to try to diagnose the issue, it did, on one boot, display the session manager window asking for login/password credentials when cycling between graphical & text modes. It cycles too quickly to be able to enter any information, even if it did stay on one of the ttys. Trying to switch to a standard text console via keypress, or even console 7 (where my session manager or desktop normally resides) does nothing, the cycling behavior continues with no obvious changes. Rebooting does not occur by simply pressing ctrl-alt-delete; you have to hold it down before it is able to signal shutdown, with whatever flags that are signaled with the repeated keypress detection.
Before this issue came up, the machine had been up for at least a couple of weeks, during which I had run '' several times. One of the times was the same day that this reboot occurred, but I don't think there is any real way to know whether or not this issue was caused by any of the upgrades since the boot prior to that. There had been no tinkering with any configuration files that would've had an effect in the X display manager loading process.Code:apt update; apt upgrade
Googling this problem has not turned up anything that seems relevant. However, there was one session manager cycling issue that kept turning up, no matter how I tried to reword my search terms, so it is definitely possible that this issue was masking the result(s) that I was looking for. I followed at least a dozen different links that seemed like they had a chance (albeit small) of being related to what I had going on, but with more detailed examination none were related.
Also, it should be noted that I am utilizing an nVidia GTX 1080 graphics card. I tried looking up information specifically relevant to that hardware, as well, and found nothing.
I booted into rescue mode several times, examined everything that would be relevant in /var/log, and couldn't find the slightest indication of anything amiss. At one point, I did realize that my root partition was below 5% available, so I freed up space on there, but this didn't change the situation at all upon rebooting. I really don't have a clue where to go next in trying to diagnose this issue, let alone fix it. Normally I can turn up something; I've been using Linux since the mid 90s, so I've usually got a fairly decent grasp on at least knowing how to look for the information that I need.
I had to sit with this issue a bit due to multiple 'roaring fire' level issues that I had to take care, of prior to concentrating on this more than just the couple of hours that I did previously. The issue originally came up at some point early last week. At this point I do have time to concentrate on it a bit, but summer school classes are just hitting full swing, and I can't really devote enough time to make sure my backups contain everything (including the class notes I've been taking on a wiki instance that I run on that machine)... That'd entail detailed examination of 6-8TB of data, at this point. So needless to say, I'm really hoping to avoid the 'windows solution' of reinstalling the operating system. I mean that's one of the fundamental reasons I love linux, anyway; avoiding nuke & restart as a common method to solve configuration/OS issues, I mean.
Does anybody have any ideas of where I can find more detailed log information to assist in troubleshooting, or even where I might be better able to find information relevant to this particular issue? I'm at a total loss here, and I really need to get this system up and running as soon as possible to access my data. I would greatly appreciate anything that anyone might be able to offer!
TIA!
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Originally Posted by ActionParsnip
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