0

I have the present Linux Ubuntu 16.10. Today, the system acted funny by automatically closing after 1 or 2 seconds. I didn't do anything to the power on or off system. In fact, earlier I made it to 1 hr time limit before blanking out. Please let me know what the problem is.

Hobbesian Thinker
  • 51

1 Answers1

0

Without knowing exactly what's failing it's hard to say what to do to fix it, but it sounds like a display or desktop / window manager problem. But try booting from a good live ISO first, maybe it's a hardware problem.

Reinstalling everything is rather extreme, but it could actually be faster depending on whether you can get to at least a text-only terminal and how familiar you are with terminal-only tools like apt, dpkg, and aptitude (it's a nicer gui-like terminal package manager.

  • First, backup any important data you wouldn't mind having deleted - reinstalling OS's and overwriting homes is rather high-risk for data loss.

If you can login to just a text-only terminal, try these:

  • It's possible some config files in your home are messing up your gui desktop, activating the screensaver & locking the desktop after a second or two. Try adding a new user with
    sudo adduser newguy
    then see if you can log in normally as newguy - if you can, then erase your old home config files and copy over the "good" ones from newguy.

  • Maybe only reinstalling the window manager is something to try, or the desktop packages? If you can log into just a text terminal, you could search with apt and/or dpkg and/or aptitude to see what's installed now, and remove & install again?

    I don't know which ones you're using, but there are some "metapackages" for many desktops, like unity, lxde, xfce, xubuntu-desktop...
    Or packages for just the display managers or window managers, like xfwm4 for xfce, or kwin-wayland or kwin-x11 for k.

    Running dpkg -l should list all installed packages, with short descriptions too (save to file by adding > file or pipe to less with |less), looking in there should be enlightening as to what to try removing & re-installing. Try looking for "manager" or "window" or "desktop" or a common name like xfce, xfwm, unity...
    See this other Q How to list all installed packages for more info, and there are other questions about "what desktop am I using" too.

    Then try apt remove [package] or apt purge [package] followed by apt install [package] with some important-sounding packages.

Depending on the time it takes you to learn the search/install & the success you have, just backing up all data & re-installing the whole OS may be a tempting idea too.

Xen2050
  • 8,943