Reboot does not find X, goes into recovery console

[larryalk]

I have installed Gutsy from the cd 4 times. The first 3 times, upon a shutdown and power on boot, the system goes into a recovery console instead of kdm followed by X.

At the recovery console I have tried startkde as user, /etc/init.d/kdm restart as both user and root but nothing brings back kdm or X.

What could have gone wrong and how to I get back into X from the recovery console?

I have not been doing anything exotic. Just the usual sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and apt-get install of very vanilla stuff like Firefox, Joe (editor) and a few others.

Larryalk

[Snowhog]

Re: Reboot does not find X, goes into recovery console

It seems, inevitably, that video turns out to be the culprit. What video card/chip do you have?

[larryalk]

Re: Reboot does not find X, goes into recovery console

Video card is Nvidia GeForce 7300.

I mentioned in another thread above about Gutsy coming up with a restricted driver.
This time I did not activiate it.

Later I might try a ctl-alt-backspace which caused the problem the first time but I don't want to go through another install tonight!

[dibl]

Re: Reboot does not find X, goes into recovery console

No, don't do any more installations of Gutsy! :P

And don't accept anything related to the Restricted Drivers Manager.

First, set up a VESA display, as described here:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3085112.0

Then, I recommend you install Envy, and use it to install the Nvidia driver. You need to download the file

"envy_0.9.8-0ubuntu10_all.deb"

from this web site:

http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

Right-click on the downloaded file and choose "Open With > Gdebi installer (or something like that) and install it. It will put an icon in your KMenu>System folder, and also you can run it from the CLI with

sudo envy -t

That is very helpful when you accept a kernel upgrade and boot to the CLI with no GUI.

Once you have the Nvidia driver installed, you'll want to do 2 things:

1. In a console window,

sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals --composite

to enable glx and compositing.

2. In a console window,

sudo nvidia-settings

and click the "X Server Configuration" tab, and then set your resolution and refresh rates, and click "Save To X Configuration File" to save the settings.

[larryalk]

Re: Reboot does not find X, goes into recovery console

Thanks very much for your advice dibl.

At the moment I have a working system with the nv driver.
I used Envy with Feisty. It worked well and the author was very helpful when I ran into some problems.

Can you tell me why you advise first setting up a VESA display instead of going directly from the nv driver to Envy?

Larry

[dibl]

Re: Reboot does not find X, goes into recovery console

Can you tell me why you advise first setting up a VESA display instead of going directly from the nv driver to Envy?

Folks (including me) seem to run into problems sometimes, when they attempt to install a proprietary driver while running a proprietary driver. I'm not enough of a kernel engineer to be able to describe it more precisely than that. So, if you first get a (non-proprietary) VESA display running, then there's no conflict between the running driver and the new Nvidia one that you're attempting to install.

Going from the non-proprietary "nv" driver to a proprietary Nvidia may not cause the conflict -- try it and let us know.

[larryalk]

Re: Reboot does not find X, goes into recovery console

Thanks for your explanation dibl.

Right now I'm using the 'nv' driver. The restricted driver has been loaded but not activated.

I'm going to do some things that have been breaking the X system like ctl-alt-backspace or a simple reboot. If the system hangs up, I'll try your steps in 'How to get started with no gui'.
If it doesn't hang up, I'll try env at the cli.

Envy worked well for me in Feisty with a little tweaking and help from Albert.

Larry

[dibl]

Re: Reboot does not find X, goes into recovery console

The newest Nvidia driver seems very solid -- I've had no problems with it on my 7900GS. I see Alberto has released another new version of Envy. I used the last version, when I installed Gutsy RC, and have not needed it since.