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I tried to upgrade from Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 18.04 this morning. Everything went alright, except when the system finished upgrading and tried to reboot it could not enter the desktop environment and got stuck at a purple screen with 'ubuntu' and five dots below it. It lasted for about 5 hours when I realized that something probably had gone wrong.

karel
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bob wong
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4 Answers4

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Ubuntu 18.04 was not booting to the desktop environment because there was a problem with the Nvidia graphics driver. The computer has two GPUs, an integrated Intel GPU and a discrete Nvidia GTX 1050 graphics card. After changing the custom GPU to Intel in the BIOS/UEFI setup utility, it just worked.

Install proprietary Nvidia GTX 1050 graphics driver

Uninstall the existing proprietary Nvidia graphics driver and reboot before trying to automatically install the proprietary Nvidia graphics driver in Ubuntu 18.04. Don't uninstall the open source Nouveau graphics driver. The proprietary Nvidia graphics driver for the Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU can be installed in Ubuntu 18.04 from the terminal or console with the following commands:

sudo ubuntu-drivers install  
sudo reboot

When installing a proprietary graphics driver, it is not necessary to uninstall the built-in Nouveau open source graphics driver. The two graphics drivers can be installed alongside each other allowing the open source graphics driver to be used as a fallback alternative in case there is a problem using the proprietary graphics driver.

The ubuntu-drivers install command installs drivers that are appropriate for automatic installation including their dependencies, and the Nvidia driver will also be updated automatically when an update is available.

karel
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  • Did you mean I need to recover the old kernel using GRUB. I'll have a try. – bob wong Jan 05 '19 at 10:23
  • Recovering an old kernel with grub will only make matters worse because the kernel is OK, otherwise it wouldn't have shown the purple screen with the 5 dots. After you get into recovery mode the best option to try first is the failsafeX option which may be able to get into a low resolution GUI desktop environment. Then you can fix the rest of it from the terminal. – karel Jan 05 '19 at 10:28
  • Well, it did not give an error message. But it just did not work. I tried the recovery mode with clean, dpkg and grub. After it, I tried both resume from recovery mode and failsafeX. It just gave me some messages about some information of my shadowsocks(not an error) and stuck there. – bob wong Jan 05 '19 at 11:10
  • Instead of entering the virtual console it would be easier for you to select the root option from recovery mode. After selecting root the command prompt changes to # and you can run commands that require root permissions without prefacing them with sudo. For example, instead of sudo apt install lightdm type apt install lightdm – karel Jan 05 '19 at 11:18
  • Thanks for your help. It was the problem of drivers of Nvidia. I solved it now. – bob wong Jan 05 '19 at 12:13
  • What command did you run to fix the Nvidia driver problem? Please edit the last paragraph of my answer with the command you ran so we know how you solved the problem, and I'll accept your suggested edit. – karel Jan 05 '19 at 12:19
  • Actually, I did not update the driver yet. As my computer has two GPU chips, one Intel and one Nvidia GTX1050, the default driver of ubuntu 18.04 may not support Nvidia GTX1050 while it is the custom GPU of my computer. So when I realized to change the custom GPU to Intel in BIOS/UEFI, it just worked. – bob wong Jan 06 '19 at 02:50
  • @bobwong switching to the Intel video card is a good temporary workaround, but it doesn't really fix your problem. "@karel" has a good idea with the Nvidia drivers. Also see my answer for another possibility. – heynnema Jan 07 '19 at 15:16
  • After I boot the ubuntu18.04 successfully, I found that the Nvidia driver I installed on ubuntu16.04 was there. Then I could switch the custom GPU option to Nvidia GTX1050. Amazing. – bob wong Jan 08 '19 at 02:30
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You may have a problem with an older computer, with an older GPU. Try this...

  • boot to recovery mode
  • choose root access

type:

sudo mount -o remount,rw /      # to remount the disk r/w

sudo pico /etc/gdm3/custom.conf # edit this file

change:

#WaylandEnable=false

to:

WaylandEnable=false

Then reboot.

heynnema
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The old machine I was using did this same thing, I realised it was because it's only 32 bit capable and 18.x is 64 bit

CJ Boutin
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Using CTRL + F1 ( to F7 i think) should take you to non graphic ( CLI ) interface. Then You might be able log in and reinstall nvidia drivers or/and use that

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

command. It should install all drivers for your current hardware.

Renecekk
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