Black screen w/cursor after logging in Ubuntu 7.10


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I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10 (2.6.22-15-generic) a week ago, and everything seemed fine. Today I wake the machine and the screen saver won't shut off, so I reboot. The regular login screen comes up, but after I've logged in, I get a black screen with only a mouse cursor (which works normally). The machine is "up" as I can ssh into it, but I don't know what to check.

It's not a resolution issue, because I can cycle through the resolutions (ctrl-alt +) and the cursor gets larger or smaller. I've looked at the Xorg log but I don't see any errors that might relate to this. My machine doesn't have a graphics card, just the integrated Intel 82945G graphics controller chip.

There must be some configuration problem, but I don't know what to look at.

Thx!

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Sounds like a bad Gnome (if that is what you use for your Desktop Environment) configuration. Log in (even from a ssh login) and do an apt-get install xfce4-panel, then when you next try to log in, select "XFCE" for your session, and see if it works. If so, then we know it is a Gnome config issue, and you can do your repair work from that GUI. Worst case, delete the Gnome 'dot' files that hold the configuration, and they will be automatically recreated with default values.

I'm not a Gnome guy, so I cannot tell you exactly what files to remove, but if you do that first part, at least you will have a GUI to play with and use (plus, I prefer XFCE over Gnome anyhow) ;)

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I'm not a Gnome guy, so I cannot tell you exactly what files to remove, but if you do that first part, at least you will have a GUI to play with and use (plus, I prefer XFCE over Gnome anyhow) ;)

That's an ingenious idea, to install another GUI! And you're right, I'm running Gnome (just cuz its the default). So there probably is some config file that got stomped. I don't really mind whatever GUI, just something that works!

But, after doing the 'sudo apt-get install xfce4-panel' successfully and rebooting, I don't get an XFCE session option on the login panel. All I get are:

1. Last session (--> black screen + cursor)

2. Run Xclient script (--> black screen + cursor)

3. GNOME (--> black screen + cursor)

4. Failsafe GNOME (--> color screen + cursor, but no GUI)

5. Failsafe terminal (--> works but no GUI, text only)

Is there some additional magic to install XFCE to somehow cause it to appear in the session options?

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Okay, what I just did was to install KDE. It shows up in the sessions options, but when I log in using KDE I still get the black screen with a mouse cursor!

Does this point to some sort of graphics chip driver or something? Any way to reload/reinstall such things?

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Okay, what I just did was to install KDE. It shows up in the sessions options, but when I log in using KDE I still get the black screen with a mouse cursor!

Does this point to some sort of graphics chip driver or something? Any way to reload/reinstall such things?

Well, I guess if neither KDE nor Gnome can work right, it must the graphics hardware or driver? Odd thing is that before I log in, I do get a full screen GUI, and it looks normal. Dunno what happens after logging in, but its hosed.

Do you think getting a graphics card for it might work?

Do you think getting a graphics card for it might work?

Just had another thought. Before I go and buy a graphics card, what if I create another user account, and log into that? Then it would bypass anything that might be wrong in my own account setup.

How do you create a new user account from the command line??

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Maybe beyond a Desktop issue, it is an X issue?

Doing a rebuild your xorg conf file might work. Don't quote me on this, but this might work:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Just make a backup of your current /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, first!

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Maybe beyond a Desktop issue, it is an X issue?

Doing a rebuild your xorg conf file might work. Don't quote me on this, but this might work:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Just make a backup of your current /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, first!

Great suggestion! I did the X11 reconfigure, but still no go. After I log in, when it tries to bring up my desktop, it goes black, except for the mouse cursor, which works like it should. I even blew away the xorg.conf file and rebooted, but got the same results.

Really odd. I'm willing to try anything at this point!

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Great suggestion! I did the X11 reconfigure, but still no go. After I log in, when it tries to bring up my desktop, it goes black, except for the mouse cursor, which works like it should. I even blew away the xorg.conf file and rebooted, but got the same results.

As a test, I booted my machine from a Windows Vista disk. It works fine. Nice GUI, fine color, resolution, etc. So that kinda rules out a hardware issue. But under Linux Ubuntu 7.10, I get the 'black screen of GUI death'. Surely there's some way to diagnose/fix this? It works fine in all respects but for the user GUI. The login GUI appears fine. I just don't get a desktop GUI when I log in, only a normal white mouse cursor atop a black background. Getting into text mode (ctl-alt-F1) works normally.

Where's my GUI?! Argh! Isn't there some way to force-reset it into some kind of sane display mode?

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When you reset your X settings, did you select "vesa" video driver? It is sort of a fail-safe standard set of video settings.

You might also try booting the CD "live" and see what your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file has set for video (since it works), and contrast that to your current non-working setup.

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When you reset your X settings, did you select "vesa" video driver? It is sort of a fail-safe standard set of video settings.

Hmm, the reconfigure procedure doesn't come up with a 'select video driver' option. But looking in the xorg.conf file, it does appear to be using VESA, as there are numerous references to it.

I just blew away /etc/X11/xorg* and still it boots up with the black screen and cursor. Does this mean it might not be the X11 settings? Why does the login GUI work fine, just not my login GUI? I looked through the syslog file, but I don't see any video related errors.

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Unfortunately, you got me. I have never this sort of problem before, so was pretty much at the limits of my experience when the thread started. :(

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Do a ctrl-alt-F1 to get to a terminal screen. Log in and type "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop" After that type "startx /usr/bin/gnome-session" and see what happens. If it comes again to a black screen with a cursor go back to the terminal (ctrl-alt-backspace). There will be some output there that might diagnose what the problem is. Good luck!

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Do a ctrl-alt-F1 to get to a terminal screen. Log in and type "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop" After that type "startx /usr/bin/gnome-session" and see what happens. If it comes again to a black screen with a cursor go back to the terminal (ctrl-alt-backspace). There will be some output there that might diagnose what the problem is. Good luck!

Hi Mitch,

Thanks for the suggestions. It came back with a bizillion errors, of all kinds. When I saw this error:

gnome-panel: error while loading shared libraries: libgnome-desktop-2.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I figured something musta got stomped on, so I did:

$ sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop

and then:

$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

along with multiple:

$ sudo apt-get update

and

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

until there wan't anything more to install.

(I guess there is also 'sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop' and 'sudo aptitude install kubuntu-desktop' but I'm not sure how they differ from 'apt-get').

Guess what? I got my GUI back, Gnome and KDE too! :woot:

What a wild ride this has been!

Thanks, Mark & Mitch. I learned alot in the process!

--transini

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Hi Mitch,

Thanks for the suggestions. It came back with a bizillion errors, of all kinds. When I saw this error:

gnome-panel: error while loading shared libraries: libgnome-desktop-2.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I figured something musta got stomped on, so I did:

$ sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop

and then:

$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

along with multiple:

$ sudo apt-get update

and

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

until there wan't anything more to install.

(I guess there is also 'sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop' and 'sudo aptitude install kubuntu-desktop' but I'm not sure how they differ from 'apt-get').

Guess what? I got my GUI back, Gnome and KDE too! :woot:

What a wild ride this has been!

Thanks, Mark & Mitch. I learned alot in the process!

--transini

Wow! Thats a rather intense way of doing it. For future reference, a simple "sudo dpkg-reconfigure ubuntu-desktop" would have done the same thing. Glad you sorted it out!

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