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I've recently installed ubuntu 13.10 64bit on a desktop (UEFI mode). After the plymouth splash i get a black screen. After some experiments I found a temporary solution:

  • switch back to tty1 and login
  • sudo unity-greeter
  • get an awful error: (unity-greeter:2109): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: Failed to launch bus: Failed to launch session bus
  • sudo reboot
  • after reboot unity-greeter starts up just fine until logoff
  • (after graphical login a procedure to report an Xorg crash starts)

I have an Nvidia graphics card, I tried all drivers (nouveau, currunt, experimental, xorg-edgers etc) but there was no change (with the exception of the xorg-edgers that always gave the corrupted configuration prompt, which, sadly, didn't solve a thing).

Any help/suggestion is appreciated :)

EDIT: After some experiments (see comments to answers) the problems came to be more random. At the moment it seems not to present itself when there is an Xorg problem (apport starting just after login) but sometimes I get a clean start even when there is no error to report. I think there's a link between "having an Xorg error" and "starting unity-greeter/lightdm correctly" because I tried using a faulty mouse (pointer stuck at boot with both win7 and ubuntu) and in that case unity-greeter/lightdm always starts (but of course then I have to disconnect the faulty mouse...).

I was asked for logs: I'll provide them the next time the problem presents itself (I'll try some reboots but I don't know when it will happen again :( ).

I was also asked for info about hardware and configuration:

  • lshw relevant info:

    *-display
            description: VGA compatible controller
            product: GF116 [GeForce GT 640 OEM]
            vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
            physical id: 0
            bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
            version: a1
            width: 64 bits
            clock: 33MHz
            capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
            configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
            resources: irq:89 memory:fc000000-fdffffff memory:d0000000-d7ffffff memory:d8000000-dbffffff ioport:e000(size=128) memory:fe000000-fe07ffff

  • lspci -v relevant info:

    01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 [GeForce GT 640 OEM] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
    Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device 2319
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 89
    Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
    Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
    Memory at d8000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
    I/O ports at e000 [size=128]
    [virtual] Expansion ROM at fe000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: nvidia

  • Xorg version: 7.7 (apt-cache show xserver-xorg | grep Version gives: Version: 1:7.7+1ubuntu6)

  • Nvidia driver version: 331.20 (from x-swat ppa)
  • uname -r: 3.11.0-15-generic

I can't think of other info that could be needed, if you can just say so :)

EDIT: it has been 3 days since the last time the error presented. Nothing changed in the system (at lest not by my doing) so I have no idea of what caused it and what solved it. Thanks to everybody that helped, I'll post updates if (and when) I'll have black screen again...

Nicola Feltrin
  • 1,853

4 Answers4

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The default Ubuntu login display manager is called lightdm because it is lightweight and therefore fast. Normally this is a good thing, but you may be booting to your login screen so quickly that your Nvidia graphics card isn't able to keep up. So try installing GDM. GDM is an alternative login display manager to lightdm.

During the installation of gdm you will be asked to select either gdm or lightdm as the default login display manager. Select gdm.

You can switch back and forth between lightdm and gdm at any time from the terminal by running sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm. This will open up a new window allowing you to select either gdm or lightdm as the default login display manager.

karel
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Please uninstall any other driver first and then install the following:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-319 nvidia-settings-319 nvidia-prime

PS: although it is a desktop it is detecting that your intel processor also has a graphics card so it is a hybrid system, you need the nvidia-pime package to make it work correctly, please post back your feedback, thank you.

Brask
  • 1,588
0

Try:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure unity-greeter

If that doesn't work boot from a live CD (provided that you are able to get to a desktop from there), back up your old xconfig settings, and copy over the ones from the live CD.

Change to Root:

sudo su

backup:

mv /media/<Name of your Ubuntu Partion>/etc/X11/Xsession.d/ /media/<Name of your Ubuntu Partion>/etc/X11/old.Xsession.d/

copy:

cp /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ /media/<Name of your Ubuntu Partion>/etc/X11/Xsession.d/
virtualxtc
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0

Maybe you're seeing this apparently often-encountered issue with incorrect installation of Nvidia drivers: Blank screen after installing nvidia restricted driver. Do uninstall, purge and reconfigure the packages as explained in that question.

Additionally, you may want to make sure that the Nvidia drivers that you're selecting are indeed appropriate for your graphics card. See Nvidia Geforce 680 GTX - Glitches on screen for instructions on how to do this.

Lastly, this may be a shot in the dark, but as explained in what graphics drivers are now in use on this NVIDIA card?, the Nvidia X Server on my laptop flickers, hangs and segfaults on start-up. I am able to start X only if I install the proprietary Nvidia drivers for my graphics card (nvidia-304) in one kernel (say, 3.2.0-23-generic), and then boot in a different kernel (say, 3.2.0-57-generic). It clearly uses some fallback driver, and I can't understand which one it is, but it seems to just work.

Community
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landroni
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