No more desktop

[Steve-01370]

I had a Windoze machine. I decided to make it a dual boot machine. I tried with kubuntu with kde 15.04 and the installation would get to the initial desktop and then freeze. I'd run kubuntu 14.4 with kde on this laptop (a Dell Inspiron 7720) before, so I reinstalled that. It installed with no problem and I ran all the updates. The dual boot feature worked fine, as did Kubuntu, but after the updates I started seeing a ""fifo underrun" message on bootup. There was a lot of info before fifo, but it scrolled too quickly for me to read. The error message appeared right after the first desktop with the "Kubuntu" logo showed up, but as the system loaded fine, I wasn't terribly worried. Now when I try and start Kubuntu though, I get to that error message, then I get the Kubuntu logo, then it sounds like it's loading, but nothing happens. I CAN go into recovery mode and I get the message
"initctl: Event failed" as soon as it tries to resume a normal bootup, but if I choose the recovery mode option to drop to a root shell prompt, that works. Trying to run "startx" from there just gives me a bunch of xauth and xinit error messages, so I'm guessing the problem is with my x configuration, but that guess is as much as I can come up with. I'd really appreciate any help. I really like Kubuntu and I'd LOVE to be able to just dump Windoze, but at this point that's the thing working.

[oshunluvr]

Sounds like you're maybe running GUI programs with root access incorrectly? Use "kdesudo" not "sudo" with GUI programs.

Also, not a good idea to run "startx" as root. Just no reason to and you'll much things up.

Anyway: Try booting into recovery, navigating to your user's home and changing ownership of all the file in there to you:

cd /home/<username>
chown -R <username>/<username> *

and reboot.

The fifo underrun could be video driver related.

[Simon]

Hey Steve, I am having trouble visualizing what you are saying. You get the Kubuntu Logo and it goes to a "black screen"? At this point can you CTRL+ALT+1 to a text prompt and log in? Black screen could mean you just don't have the X server installed properly.

[Buddlespit]

I had a Windoze machine. I decided to make it a dual boot machine. I tried with kubuntu with kde 15.04 and the installation would get to the initial desktop and then freeze. I'd run kubuntu 14.4 with kde on this laptop (a Dell Inspiron 7720) before, so I reinstalled that. It installed with no problem and I ran all the updates. The dual boot feature worked fine, as did Kubuntu, but after the updates I started seeing a ""fifo underrun" message on bootup. There was a lot of info before fifo, but it scrolled too quickly for me to read. The error message appeared right after the first desktop with the "Kubuntu" logo showed up, but as the system loaded fine, I wasn't terribly worried. Now when I try and start Kubuntu though, I get to that error message, then I get the Kubuntu logo, then it sounds like it's loading, but nothing happens. I CAN go into recovery mode and I get the message
"initctl: Event failed" as soon as it tries to resume a normal bootup, but if I choose the recovery mode option to drop to a root shell prompt, that works. Trying to run "startx" from there just gives me a bunch of xauth and xinit error messages, so I'm guessing the problem is with my x configuration, but that guess is as much as I can come up with. I'd really appreciate any help. I really like Kubuntu and I'd LOVE to be able to just dump Windoze, but at this point that's the thing working.

I'm a little fuzzy here... Are you on 15.04 or 14.04?

[Steve-01370]

Sorry. I was/am tired. I'm running 14.04. I tried installing 15.04, and I got that same "FIFO underrun" error message and then it just froze. I re-downloaded the DVD image again today to try again, and exactly the same thing happened.

I get the logo. Then a black screen as if it's loading. Then nothing. I CAN CTRL_ALT_F1 to a terminal and login in text mode.

I spent most of last night re-installing the xserver and following every guide that I could find. I'm sure the problem comes from the NVIDIA driver. Everything worked on the kubuntu 14.04 desktop, and then I listened to the messages that kept coming up about enabling drivers, and as soon as I enabled the nvidia 331.113 driver (the recommended one), I started getting that "FIFO underrun" message.

I re-installed 14.04 from scratch today, but I ignored the messages about updating drivers (actually about updating anything), and so far no error messages and programs I installed like Clementine for music are working just fine. The display when watching movies isn't as smooth as it was before, but Kubuntu looks like it's staying put, so maybe I just need to wait for nvidia to release a new driver.

[Steve-01370]

Looks like I spoke too soon. I installed Virtualbox in Kubuntu this morning. (There are a couple Windows programs - particularly autohotkey that I absolutely need). I bebooted as soon as Virtualbox was installed. Or, I TRIED to reboot. The computer gets as far as the "Kubuntu" logo on the black background and then freezes. And this time I really can't CTRL+ALT+F1 (or 2, or 3, etc) to get to a terminal and text login. I've waited 10 minutes and the computer is just frozen. I'll probably try to get to a text login and see about uninstalling Virtualbox. It's almost a moot point though. As much as I like Kubuntu, I NEED autohotkey, so I NEED Virtualbox. Oh well.

[Steve-01370]

Now that's just weird. I logged on in recovery mode and did "apt-get remove Virtualbox". I got prompted at the end to do "apt-get -f install", so I did that too. Then I rebooted and my desktop was back. I decided to try to install Virtualbox from the Kubuntu installer (Muon Discover), figuring maybe that'd catch dependencies that just the Virtualbox installer missed. It was a slightly older version than the one from the website, but I didn't think that much mattered for my purposes. But the installation stopped a few seconds into the installation with an error about my Kubuntu installation. I went to run Clementine for music from the list of recently installed programs - and Virtualbox was there. And it works. That makes no sense whatsoever. SOMETHING got removed when I did that "apt-get remove Virtualbox".