3

Sometimes, when booting, I get:

  1. grub
  2. ubuntu purple background
  3. Grey backlit screen
  4. Black screen

And nothing else. It does seem that Ubuntu is correctly booted. To fix the issue, I can put the computer to sleep and back again, and then the screen will be OK. I am certain that ubuntu is booted because, during the black screen, I typed enter, then my password, then I poped a terminal. After that, I did the "fix" routine and confirmed that I had an open terminal in my session.

I am unsure where to look at as most questions related to this cannot boot at all. I did a video recording of the failed boot, I suspect this is clearer than my explanation.

Here are the 4 lines that flashes, from dmesg:

 [   20.065643] ACPI Error: Needed type [Reference], found [Integer] 00000000214ff4c5 (20181213/exresop-69)

 [   20.065656] ACPI Error: AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE, While resolving operands for [Store] (20181213/dswexec-427)

 [   20.065700] No Arguments are initialized for method [RPPC]

 [   20.065704] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed  \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC0.RPPC, AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE (20181213/psparse-531)

 [   20.065716] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed  \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC0._Q04, AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE (20181213/psparse-531)

Looking these up didn't yield anything helpful for me but I might have missed crucial information as I've got no idea what's happening. I've seen driver related answers, telling to install them from Ubuntu's "additional drivers" tool if they appear; there's nothing here for me.

Questions are therefore:

  • What other information can I provide to diagnostic what happens?
  • How to fix this?

Edit 1: I tried both kernel options at boot: 5.0 and 4.18, didnt' help

Luke Marlin
  • 153
  • While the associated question helped (especially section 3), I thought I had a different issue because I had a way to make it work, I wasn't stuck on the black screen. – Luke Marlin Dec 30 '19 at 12:39

2 Answers2

2

Seems like a graphics driver issue to me. Have you tried to add nomodeset to your grub?

nomodeset: tells your system to not load the display drivers until the system is completely booted.

During grub screen press the e key to edit the grub.

  1. Find this line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
  2. Change it to: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"
  3. then, Ctrl+ X

You should boot normally. These changes last only for one boot.

If this works and you want to make the changes permanent:

  1. I am using Vim here but you can use nano or whatever text editor you please:

    sudo vim /etc/default/grub

  2. Make the same changes as above: Save and exit.

  3. Then

    sudo update-grub
reboot

Now coming to the core issue here:

You need to figure out what driver is causing these issue and re-install it.

Simpler way of doing that would be to go "Softwares & Updates" > "Additional Drivers" and install any missing drivers.

If your driver is corrupt the process will be a bit more hands on.

Pablo Bianchi
  • 15,657
Ifly777
  • 123
  • As mentioned in the comments, "Softwares & Updates" > "Additional Drivers" is empty for me. I also have a note saying that no proprietary drivers are installed, if that matters. So how can I identify and fix the driver? – Luke Marlin Dec 30 '19 at 12:35
  • What graphic card you have ? lspci|grep VGA – Ifly777 Dec 31 '19 at 05:39
  • Beaver creek [Radeon HD 6520G], Seymour [Radeon HD 6400M/7400M Series]. – Luke Marlin Jan 26 '20 at 16:00
0

Hi I have faced the same problem long ago. May be my personal experience will help you,

I booted my system into textual mode using CTRL + ALT + F5 and then reinstalled the files related to X-window system like gdm and gnome,

May be you should give it a try, try to see the grub file too if they are broken. You can also try re-compliling the kernel files available in ubuntu official site

LeO
  • 116
  • But X/gnome seems to be OK because I can access it just fine after the small sleep/up trick. If X has an issue, can I look it up in some logs somewhere? – Luke Marlin Dec 23 '19 at 11:41
  • You can check the logs file in /var/log, all the files related to errors and loading the system logs are kept on the folder. – LeO Dec 23 '19 at 11:46
  • /var/log contains a lot as you know, any idea on even what to look for? – Luke Marlin Dec 23 '19 at 17:36
  • May be cat syslog | grep "gdm3" or "gnome" can help you. Try to watch if there are errors. May be https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2383902 can also help you – LeO Dec 24 '19 at 12:59
  • Nothing interesting came up from syslog. I tried to reinstall gdm3 and ubuntu-desktop: no change. I'm not sure what's in that thread applies to my case. – Luke Marlin Dec 24 '19 at 15:03