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I upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to 18.10 without any errors. When I restarted, I got a black screen with a blinking cursor (couldn't type anything) right after GRUB. Pressing Ctrl-Alt-F2 got me to a terminal session.

I rebooted, then tried editing GRUB by pressing e and changing quiet splash to nomodeset. Pressed F10. It didn't work.

I had to reboot, press Ctrl-Alt-F2 then remove the nvidia drivers by typing sudo apt-get purge ^nvidia. Only then was Ubuntu able to boot successfully.

I installed the nvidia 340.107 drivers from the Additional Drivers tab in Software & Updates. Rebooting got me to the same black screen as before, and I had to purge the nvidia drivers again.

System: AMD FX-6300 CPU, Asrock 970 Extreme mobo, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 9600GT.

Thank you.

glottis
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    @N0rbert Being able to wake my PC up from Suspend successfully, which 18.10 can do when using the open source video driver. Nothing I tried solved the suspend problem in 18.04. Also, "5 years without problems"? Haha! – glottis Oct 19 '18 at 08:37
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    Why was the question downvoted, besides someone disagreeing with my reasons to upgrade? If there's something wrong or unclear in my question, point it out in a comment... – glottis Oct 19 '18 at 11:07
  • This helped me solve the black screen on login: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1068848/ubuntu-18-04-black-screen-after-login/1145157#1145157 – axel22 May 21 '19 at 19:39

3 Answers3

22

I had this issue too with the nvidia drivers and Ubuntu 18.10. I found a thread on the French Ubuntu website which helped me. It's a fix for Ubuntu 17.10 but it worked for me on 18.10.

Try this:

  1. Edit /etc/gdm3/custom.conf:

    sudo gedit /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

  2. Here uncomment the line

    #WaylandEnable=false

    which becomes also

    WaylandEnable=false

    Don't forget to save!

With this you should be able to install the nvidia drivers (I'm using the 390 version which works for me).

Source

MoussierElPatate
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    I had to use sudo gedit /etc/gdm3/custom.conf (your answer was without sudo) and it worked! Merci beaucoup! :-) – glottis Oct 25 '18 at 22:39
  • Oh how stupid I am ! I forgot it, well seen! – MoussierElPatate Oct 26 '18 at 21:13
  • @MoussierElPatate When starting graphic apps like gedit from the terminal command line, you should use sudo -H, or you'll probably create a login loop problem. – heynnema Nov 28 '18 at 14:34
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    @glottis When starting graphic apps like gedit from the terminal command line, you should use sudo -H, or you'll probably create a login loop problem. – heynnema Nov 28 '18 at 14:35
  • Thanks for this. Just saved my bacon too on upgrade from 18.04. – Dirk Eddelbuettel Dec 02 '18 at 16:58
  • using gedit when being in terminal already is not a good idea and not a good advice anyway. and mentioning sudo doesn't seem like something that should be expected to be given - i find it pretty obvious that you need to edit config files in etc with root privileges. – tymik Mar 06 '19 at 13:11
  • You are my hero Moussier! – Doğuş Apr 06 '19 at 15:58
3

This thread helped me with the same problem (Ubuntu 18.04 GTX1080)

sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

for low latency kernel headers then add 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nvidia-drm.modeset=1"

to your grub. Then you need to regenerate the initramfs and the Kernel modules. Dont forget to update your grub.sudo update-grub2.

Hope this helps.

David
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  • I don't know how to do any of this. Add to my grub? Where? How do I regenerate the initramfs and kernel modules? – Michael May 05 '20 at 08:34
  • I should add that I suspect a GRUB issue because when I updated it asked me some question about which version of some GRUB file I wanted to use. Having no clue I asked it to show me a diff, but it continued along with the install and never showed me anything! – Michael May 05 '20 at 08:35
0

I had this issue after upgrading from 18.04. I have a nvidia 1070ti GPU and was previously using the nvidia-390 driver successfully with 18.04. For me, the upgrade (somehow) completed but left several packages partially installed i.e. I noticed several in iu state (not ii as expected) by doing this

dpkg -l | grep nvidia

I finished the install by doing this

sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo reboot

which fixed the issue. Now, everything is fine. Hope that helps!

Michael Sandman
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  • I tried this by installing the nvidia drivers again. The dpkg -l | grep nvidia command showed everything as ii. Rebooted, black screen again, Alt-Ctrl-F2 and tried the command again, everything is ii. Thank you anyway! – glottis Oct 20 '18 at 20:59
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    Sorry it didn't help you. I should have mentioned that I had several other packages that were partially installed, not just the nvidia packages. Which is why I did dpkg --configure -a, and not just an nvidia reinstall. I'm guessing that in my case the upgrade actually partially failed, even though it completed. Sounds like my case was a little different than yours. Best of luck! – Michael Sandman Oct 21 '18 at 21:26