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After

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get autoremove --purge

I get a blinking cursor when booting up Ubuntu VM. How might I fix this?

I have spent the past four days looking through forum posts and following debugging guides to no avail. I have seen most if not all "blinking cursor" related questions and their solutions and have tried them to the best of my ability. I have come to realize that this problem has shown up quite often in Ubuntu as per this post. That post got me to thinking that I have a GPU problem, as opposed to a lack of kernels problem, due to my running autoremove --purge.

Example of the blinking cursor screen:

The result of pressing shift on boot:

The result of using recovery mode:

The result of selecting 4.4.0-130-generic (recovery mode):

I have tried the nomodeset option after removing quiet splash and the intel Vt-x solution like here.

I can also access a shell prompt via FN-CTRL-ALT-F1 as posited here.

And finally, if it was not already obvious I am running an Ubuntu 16.04 VM on my MacBook Air. Any and all advice is thoroughly appreciated.

The following contains posts and bug tracker forums that might be helpful although they have not yet yielded any fruit for me.

@Melebius asked if I could provide the boot messages when I change quiet splash to 'nomodeset'; the below image is a screen shot of a portion of these messages. Note, that I have checked out the error Failed to start clean up any mess left by odns-up and it led me to some of the previously less-related links above. That's my fault for not including the connection between some of them, specifically the lightdm link. post <code>nomodeset</code> change

Adding screen shot of output of startx output of startx

z.karl
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    I have used both "Power off Machine" and "send shutdown signal", but based off of your link I won't use "Power off Machine" any longer as I see its negative effect, thank you very much for the link. – z.karl Jul 26 '18 at 03:05
  • apt-get update should be run before apt-get upgrade. Not sure whether it’s related to your problem though. The links you shared are mostly not related, particularly your GRUB seems to be working well since you can successfully boot to the recovery mode at least. Do you get any boot messages when removing quiet splash from boot parameters? – Melebius Jul 26 '18 at 09:23
  • Thanks for all the edits guys. @Melebius it's my fault, but I didn't mention the apt-get commands in any particular order and I should have. I did run update before upgrade, and I ran --purge last. I will add an edit with a picture of the boot messages when I change to nomodeset from quiet splash. – z.karl Jul 26 '18 at 15:00
  • @z.karl Thank you for the update. I reordered the commands as you wrote – I am afraid someone could just google this page and run them (not the first time to see them misordered)… Judging from the added screenshot, I suspect you’re having problems with LightDM, check this question. – Melebius Jul 26 '18 at 15:17
  • @Melebius I thought so as well after seeing that error message, and went down the lightDM rabbit hole. I hadn't seen the output of the startx command, and it seems to have some useful, failure, information. Any thoughts? – z.karl Jul 26 '18 at 15:46
  • This error message can be found in an existing question, you can check the answers. However, you might also need to reinstall components like LightDM, Xserver etc. BTW when posting a screenshot of the VM window, please limit it to the window. On macOS, you can use Cmd+Shift+4, then Spacebar. – Melebius Jul 26 '18 at 20:24
  • @Melebius Thanks for the link, and I will be sure to only post images of the VM window. However, I have already tried the lightDM solutions mentioned and the permissions on my .Xauthority file are correct. I have even tried removing it and rebooting, and running startx like the solution suggests with no luck. I can reach a virtual terminal, but the GUI login page refuses to show. – z.karl Jul 26 '18 at 21:45

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