nvidia module doesn't load - kde/x fails to start

[bag]

Dear all,

I have been experiencing some trouble with booting my pc recently and need some help fixing it. To cut a long story short, the fix I need is only temporary - because I hope to upgrade to 12.04 as soon as possible, and I only really need to boot back into the GUI so that I can make a full back-up before making the jump with a clean install. As such, booting into the GUI once, without even fixing the system is fine.

There are two reasons why I think I need to get back into a gui - firstly, I wanted to make use of the 'export list of installed programs' option in the software manager (to make for easier reinstallation) - and secondly, because the /home drive is encrypted, and I need to be able to access the drive as decrypted before I back-up all data to an external USB drive (vfat).

After much trouble, I do now have access to a command-line interface and a booting kernel - but KDE will not start because of problems with the NVIDIA module. I can also access the filesystem from a chroot environment but that doesn't let me see the contents of /home.

From the command line inside the booting kernel, I have tried updating Nvidia - but it seems to fail, and in any case, even after attempting the update, the system will not currently boot to a GUI.

I have used a boot-repair cd, which seems to be an excellent utility - and in fact, that is what replaced grub2 files and the kernel to get me this far. However, I still need to get inside the system enough to be able to do a full back-up.

I had thought that I could do it all from the command line - but was having trouble mounting the external hard drive - and copying across all the data. Any pointers on that would be most appreciated...

So I have some questions.

1. What's the best way to fix NVIDIA from the command line and get the system booting back to KDE?
2. Assuming that this can't be done - or I come across more problems whilst attempting it - can someone point me in the right direction and guide me through how to mount my external hard drive and fully back-up all my KDE settings and encrypted data from my /home drive (in decrypted format)?
3. Alternatively - can anyone confirm what happens if I back up the encrypted /home drive and upgrade - what would be the procedure for accessing this encrypted data again from inside 12.04? Is that possible?

As a final aside - I already have the Kubuntu iso downloaded onto a partition on the hard drive in preparation for the clean install. So, for bonus points, rather than download it again on my wife's laptop, can anyone tell me how I can burn the iso file to a DVD from the command line? This will save me some download time/data - and would be pleasingly geeky at the same time - I've never used the cli for burning!

As you can see - I believe that there are several options to attack this problem - but I'd appreciate help in any of them to get me moving on to 12.04 safely, along with all my data!

Many thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Regards,

Bag.

[67GTA]

Did you install the driver from Nvidia or from the repos/package manager? Either way we can give you command line instructions to uninstall and delete your xorg.conf file. This will let you boot to a GUI with the open source nouveau driver that was used initially.

[bag]

I think I installed from the repository. I used the GUI tool in Kubuntu to install, and did not install from the NVIDIA site.

Please let me know how to roll back to the open source driver. That sounds like a great solution that may well get me straight back in.

Many thanks,

bag

[67GTA]

Sorry for not responding sooner. I haven't even turned my computer on (honey do's). You should be able to boot to a root console by selecting recovery mode from the grub screen. Then just run

apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*

Then

rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This should let you boot to a GUI with the open source driver.

[bag]

Back into the GUI, stuck on backing up my data...

Many thanks for that, much appreciated. In the meantime, based on your comments, I had moved the xorg.conf file to a backup file and tried to remove the NVIDIA driver.

The xorg.conf file moved ok, but the purge of NVIDIA files failed. There seems to be a problem with the system as it is - it has difficulty executing any installs or removals because apt-get keeps failing either at the command line or with the GUI. The fail happens because of some kernels that were deleted and not removed properly, and so it tries to clean it up - but is completely blocked and fails each time without installing/upgrading/removing anything that I ask it to.

If you know how to fix that, I'd be really grateful - since it's now holding me back on completing my backups.

Nevertheless, having moved the xorg.conf file, I rebooted and crossed my fingers. It worked. I managed to boot back into a working GUI desktop with the open-source driver. The resolution is awful, but that's not important. I'm back in, and have copied all my photos (most important) to a latest backup.

The last remaining thing now is: saving and backing up my /home partition.

This is where I'm hitting a new problem.

I go into Dolphin and ask it to show all files in /home. Works fine. Then I select all and try to copy them to my backup location. It fails several times and kicks you out when it cannot copy some folder or other... At this point, you don't know exactly how much has been copied or whether if you try again, you will miss out some files. So I delete all that has already been copied and try again... still fails.

Can someone please tell me the easiest way to back up a complete /home folder without difficulties? And how to verify that I have copied everything across?

I either need to be able to do this from standard Kubuntu installed programs, from the command line, or as a last alternative, I need to fix apt-get so that it can then install a proper backup utility to do the job.

Almost done - once I'm backed up, and sure that all is there, then I can just go for a clean install for 12.04 and I'm away.

Any help on this would be very much appreciated.

Kind regards,

Bag.

[67GTA]

I'm not sure about backing up an encrypted home directory. You might want to start a new thread about that. Post the error apt is giving you and we will try to work it out.

[SteveRiley]

There are two reasons why I think I need to get back into a gui - firstly, I wanted to make use of the 'export list of installed programs' option in the software manager (to make for easier reinstallation) - and secondly, because the /home drive is encrypted, and I need to be able to access the drive as decrypted before I back-up all data to an external USB drive (vfat).

I see you mention that you can get into your environment via chroot. Can you alternately reboot the PC and simply log into a text-mode TTY? If so, then to accomplish your tasks you don't need a GUI.

For your first need, export the list of currently installed packages with:

dpkg --get-selections > installed-stuff.txt

Then to use that list to make a clone of the system it came from, run:

sudo dpkg --set-selections < installed-stuff.txt
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

For your second need, simply cp the files in /home to someplace outside of that directory. The resulting copies will be unencrypted.

[bag]

Many thanks for your response. I really do appreciate the help.

Right - I will post the output from the apt-get failures, but I think that it too should be in a new post, since the original problem of my system not booting to a GUI has been resolved.

For those that just skipped to this part of the thread, the problem was that the nvidia module wouldn't load, and so X failed to start. It was resolved by removing (renaming) the xorg.conf file so that when booted again, the computer created a new xorg.conf and used the open source 'nouveau' driver. With a working driver, X started and KDE booted up fine.

It is not a perfect fix (e.g. possible resolution issues depending on your system), but would solve many an issue for those struggling with proprietary drivers who need to just get back to a GUI to fix their other system problems.

I have now posted two separate new posts for my existing/remaining problems...

Problem 1.
apt-get fails because of an error message related to _deleted_ (but not uninstalled) kernels. Effectively, apt-get tries to clean up the mess but cannot, fails and kicks out without executing any upgrades, installs or removals.
This problem has been posted here: http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...pt-get-failing

Problem 2.
I have an encrypted /home partition. I want to back it up - but simple drag and drop copy from my /home to a (vfat) USB drive fails repeatedly. I need to find a way to back up my data and be sure that I have everything. However, because of problem 1, I cannot currently install new software to do it, so how can I do this from the command line?
This problem has been posted here: http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...e-command-line

Many thanks for your help.

Bag.

[bag]

Steve,

Thanks for your response - will give it a go with the cp command. However, I have tried dragging and dropping (see problem 2 above in the last post) and that does not work. I presume that this is basically just a cp command anyway - so assume it would fail too...

Nevertheless, will give it a go later when I get home - and see what we get.

Will keep you posted.

Cheers,

Bag.