After Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04: "Oh no! Something went wrong"

Question

I upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 today, choosing LightDM over gdm3 during the upgrade. During the upgrade I was asked if I wanted to keep or replace /etc/sane.d/dll.conf file. I decided for keeping it.

Now, without actively rebooting, the "Oh no! Something went wrong" screen appeared.

As I am still inexperienced with this kind of troubleshooting, I feel it wouldn't be safe to just try out answers from other threads that don't have exactly the same 'history'.

Solutions I read included Ctrl+Alt+F4 and trying to login and get more information from the command line (Oh no! Something has gone wrong on restart).

Is that safe to do? Ideally, I'd like to save my data that is stored on an encrypted harddrive before trying to fix errors. I'd like to avoid reinstalling the OS.

From reading other threads, I know this post may be criticised as not being precise enough or haven't tried enough, but really I cannot get more information from that white screen myself and don't want to risk ruining everything just to provide more information...

Thank you for your help!! :)

Edit: I have no idea if the problem is related to lvm2-activation-generator, as in Ubuntu 19.10 “Something has gone wrong” after update from 19.04 This and other solutions include booting from a live usb. Can I do this 'safely' by simply switching the laptop off at this stage? Do I have to do sth before?

Answer 1

This will go a long way toward making that "Oh no something went wrong!" sign go away. First, press Ctrl+Alt+F3 to trigger the CLI, and login. Execute the command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 

to continue upgrading. Your machine will install the missing resources, and finish upgrading, and then you just have to clean up and reboot:

sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get autoremove && sudo reboot

Best of luck!

Answer 2

I had the same issue while upgrading my Ubuntu 18.04 to Ubuntu 20.04. some of the packages got crashed up. Mainly it is showing due to interruption of dpkg operations while booting the system.

Here's what I did to resolve this problem.

Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+F3 together in order to open the terminal, then enter your login credentials and execute these following commands given below:-

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo reboot

This will resolve the problem of dpkg having been interrupted.

Answer 3

I had the same issue on ubuntu 20, I've tried many things but what worked for me was removing the gnome and gnome-shell and reinstalling:

$ sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
$ sudo apt-get remove gnome-session gnome gnome-shell
$ sudo apt-get autoremove
$ sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop
$ sudo reboot

similar to was described here. (but my problem wasn't my user)

Answer 4

My question has been answered with the help of Ollie:

• sudo apt-get update returned

  Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock. It is held by process 22027 (focal)
  

• I tried to identify the process with ps aux | grep -i apt and ps -aux | grep -iE "apt-get" which didn't work, but I could identify it with pgrep focal which gave me its process ID. I killed it with sudo kill <process_id>.

• do-release-upgrade worked for me only without the -y option. It returned

  There is no development version of an LTS available.
  To upgrade to the latest non-LTS development release
  set Prompt=normal in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades
  

• Then I ran sudo apt-get upgrade -y and got the message 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. The 1 not upgraded was an expired libc++1 package.

Rebooting the computer, Ubuntu 20.04 worked well.

I then installed the current version of this libc++1 package via Synaptic.

Answer 5

To solve this problem in my case, I used the recovery mode option in the GRUB menu and then selected the option to start a root shell. Then I ran these commands

apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get clean && sudo apt-get autoremove
apt-get remove nvidia-340 

I had wrongly installed this nvidia package that was causing my issues.

Answer 6

I got this error after upgrading to Ubuntu 24.04 (noble).

I tried

• apt-get dist-upgrade
• dpkg --configure -a
• updating nvidia drivers to nvidia-driver-550
• switching to the nouveau drivers

None of this helped.

Looking into /var/log/syslog I found the following error (formatted for readability):

gnome-shell: Received an X Window System error.
  This probably reflects a bug in the program.
  The error was 'BadCursor (invalid Cursor parameter)'.
    (Details: serial 650 error_code 6 request_code 95 (core protocol) minor_code 0)
    (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
     that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
     To debug your program, run it with the MUTTER_SYNC environment
     variable to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
     backtrace from your debugger if you break on the mtk_x_error() function.)
kernel: traps: gnome-shell trap int3 ip:73dce93490df sp:7ffc7be2abb0 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.8000.0[73dce9305000+a0000]
gnome-session: gnome-session-binary: WARNING: Application 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' killed by signal 5
gnome-session: gnome-session-binary: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
gnome-session-binary: WARNING: Application 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' killed by signal 5
gnome-session-binary: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
gnome-session-binary: Unrecoverable failure in required component org.gnome.Shell.desktop

This turned out to be a known bug.

The solution was to change the default cursor theme with the following command:

sudo ln -s -f /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursor.theme /etc/alternatives/x-cursor-theme

Answer 7

First try to see if you can successfully login with another user account. If everything works, try deleting/moving the .config directory in your home folder.

$ rm -rf ~/.config/

This will probably delete a bunch of settings which will go back to their default values; but it solved the issue for me.

Answer 8

This worked for me.
Lets say you always login using: USER1
First check: If we can login to other user. Lets say other user: USER2
(Note: If you don't have another user, create a new user)
If you are successful in login using user USER2

Probably, this is issue of config file of the user.
Rename ~/.config to ~/.config.bak.
Then, try to login to that user

You can always get shell using CTRL+ALT+F2 and login with user.

Answer 9

Same issue I have faced on Ubuntu 22.04.

I have also tried Ctrl + Alt + F3 but i gets stuck at a blinking cursor (_)

Then I forced to turn off my computer by pressing the Power button.

And again turn on my computer while starting boot press Shift key And select Advance options for ubuntu

And then select your preferred kernel version with (Recovery mode)

In the recovery mode menu, you'll have various options to troubleshoot your system, such as repairing broken packages or dropping to a root shell.

First try repairing broken packages and reboot your computer.

If repairing broken packages not solve your issue then try the above method.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get remove package_name
sudo apt-get purge remove package_name
sudo reboot

Replace package_name with the actual package name that affected your computer.

BTW If you want to check the installed package list then try dpkg --list

Answer 10

Open recovery mode in the GRUB menu.

If the menu does not display, do this:

Turn on computer and wait for the error screen to show.

Press Cntrl + Alt + F3 and log in.

run sudo nano /etc/default/grub

edit GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT to menu

edit GRUB_TIMEOUT to like 15 or something.

run sudo update-grub

then run sudo reboot

when the GRUB menu appears, select "Advanced options for Ubuntu", then select the topmost recovery mode option.

Enable networking, then run the "fix broken packages option".

It hopefully will work.

It worked for me.

Other suggestions: try removing unnecessary RAM or run memtest86+ (it takes forever though)

Answer 11

I faced this problem and solved it by

First, go to tty: Ctrl + Alt + F3, and login.

Then, as dpkg was locking things, I deleted all lock log files

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock /var/cache/apt/archives/lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend

as described here.

Finally, I resumed the release upgrade by following the steps given in this answer.

Answer 12

when I upgrade Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 22.04 this same error occurred on my laptop.

Oh no! Something has gone wrong.
A problem has occurred and the system can't recover Please contact a system administrator

Atteched Screenshot

So I can forcibly reboot my laptop and then

Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+F3 together in order to open the terminal, then enter my login credentials username first and then password and execute these following commands given below:-

apt --fix-broken install

Answer 13

Some issue on Ubuntu 23.04

Somehow my ubuntu doesn't work with nvidia graphics card.
So you need to run sudo prime-select intel in recovery mode shell terminal.
It helped me.

Answer 14

For Armbian Systems
If your system is an Armbian, this problem is caused by the libegl-mali-xlnx package, remove it with:

sudo apt remove libegl-mali-xlnx

After, reboot your system.

Answer 15

I tried all the above and still failed to get the system to work after an upgrade from ubuntu 22 to ubuntu 24. But after tweaking a bit I found a fully working solution which was a combination of some mentioned above.

1. Revert the sources file back to the previous version that you were from. This can be done by opening /etc/apt/sources.list you will find the previous version sources has been commented. Uncomment them.

The run apt-get clean; apt-get autoclean ; apt-get autoremove; apt update ; apt upgrade -y ; apt full-upgrade -y

Remember this error is due to the fact that there are many many broken packages, in my case it was the entire gnome-shell and some packages could not be installed.

2. Reboot the system, and get back to the terminal again by pressing ctrl+alt+f3. Then again edit /etc/apt/sources.list this time by removing the old archives and leaving the new archives of the upgrade you want(first backup cat /etc/apt/sources.list > /etc/apt/sources.list.bkp).

Then run apt update ; apt upgrade -y ; apt full-upgrade ; apt install gnome-shell* -y. After try to reboot and the upgrade will be done.

Answer 16

So, I ran into this super annoying thing after Ubuntu decided to auto-update itself . I'd put in my password, see the "Oh No! Something's gone wrong" screen, and get kicked right back to the login page. Super fun times.

Here's what I did to figure things out:

Booted into Ubuntu recovery mode because, well, regular mode wasn't letting me in.

Dug into some logs Inspected /var/log/syslog

Checked /var/log/lightdm/xorg.0.log.

Reviewed /var/log/gdm3/xorg.0.log.

(all those /var/log/... ones) - felt like a detective, not gonna lie. Stumbled upon this pesky ~/.Xauthority file causing some drama. The thing had its permissions all messed up! The Real MVP Solution:

Fixed the file's permissions with:

sudo chmod 755 ~/.Xauthority

That's like telling the file to behave nicely with everyone.

Tried logging in with Xorg... nope, still acting up. Switched to Wayland at the login screen and voila! I was in! TL;DR: If you can't log into Ubuntu after an update, check if ~/.Xauthority is acting up and maybe give Wayland a shot.

Anyone else faced this? Or maybe there's a pro out there who knows how to keep the peace with Xorg?