How can I get my display back? xmodmap: unable to open display ''

Question

Like so many others, I've been trying to upgrade my OpenGL from 3.0 to 3.2, which was probably a terrible idea to begin with but here we are. Now my Ubuntu partition will not open properly and I'm currently running on the 2nd partition of my laptop containing PureOS. I think the problem comes from having tried to install ppa's, but I hope the community can help me out because I'm really stuck and I need my Ubuntu!

First some hardware/system details:
Machine: Librem 13
OS type: 64-bit
Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 620 (Kaby Lake GT2)
OS: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS

After logging in, I stay on the command line and it says xmodmap: unable to open display. Indeed echo $DISPLAY returns nothing. Running glxinfo returns "Error: unable to open display".

Here is the output for lshw for the graphics card:

sudo lshw -c video
*-display
   description: VGA compatible controller
   product: HD Graphics 620
   vendor: Intel Corporation
   physical id: 2
   bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
   version: 02
   width: 64 bits
   clock: 33MHz
   capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
   configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
   resources: irq:125 memory:d0000000-d0ffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:1c00(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

Here's the output from apt policy. I tried to remove items not relevant here like those from "http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu". Some of the ppa's were installed in an attempt to get to OpenGL 3.2 and should probably be removed:

apt policy
Package files:
 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     release a=now
 500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/updates/ubuntu bionic/main i386 Packages
     release v=18.04,o=LP-PPA-ubuntu-x-swat-updates,a=bionic,n=bionic,l=Updates,c=main,b=i386
     origin ppa.launchpad.net
 500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/updates/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
     release v=18.04,o=LP-PPA-ubuntu-x-swat-updates,a=bionic,n=bionic,l=Updates,c=main,b=amd64
     origin ppa.launchpad.net
 500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/oibaf/graphics-drivers/ubuntu bionic/main i386 Packages
     release v=18.04,o=LP-PPA-oibaf-graphics-drivers,a=bionic,n=bionic,l=Updated Open Graphics Drivers - since 2011!,c=main,b=i386
     origin ppa.launchpad.net
 500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/oibaf/graphics-drivers/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
     release v=18.04,o=LP-PPA-oibaf-graphics-drivers,a=bionic,n=bionic,l=Updated Open Graphics Drivers - since 2011!,c=main,b=amd64
     origin ppa.launchpad.net
 500 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu bionic/partner i386 Packages
     release v=18.04,o=Canonical,a=bionic,n=bionic,l=Partner archive,c=partner,b=i386
     origin archive.canonical.com
 500 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu bionic/partner amd64 Packages
     release v=18.04,o=Canonical,a=bionic,n=bionic,l=Partner archive,c=partner,b=amd64
     origin archive.canonical.com

And finally, lspci -v:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 620 (rev 02)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 02)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
00:14.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d30 (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
00:1f.5 Non-VGA unclassified device: Intel Corporation Device 9d24 (rev 21)
01:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

What's the problem causing xmodmap to fail?
Should I remove the oibaf ppa's?
Should I remove the ubuntu-x-swat ppa's?

Any help much appreciated!

(sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere in the forum, I searched on xmodmap and didn't find anything relevant)

EDIT: I didn't follow one tutorial in particular, but here's a brief recap:

GLX was returning a bad value so I did sudo apt install libnvidia-gl-440:i386 inspired by this issue with Steam: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/fu1228/steam_no_longer_launching_after_recent_ubuntu/

That seemed to make GLX work better:

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 19.2.8

(At some I also edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf as described at the bottom of this page: https://public.confluence.arizona.edu/display/UAHPC/Visualization)

Since I need OpenGL 3.2, I added the ubuntu-x-swap ppa because I thought I was missing some updates, following http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2019/07/install-mesa-19-0-8-ubuntu-18-04-19-04/

Also added the oibaf repository too see if that would upgrade OpenGL, based on this 6 year old thread: How to update OpenGL Driver on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Sorry about the mess.

Could you post, the link of the tutorial you followed, so we could see exactly what do you did — Giovanni Rodríguez, May 08 '20 at 18:08

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 11 '20 at 15:16

I think I found a way out of this mess by upgrading to Ubuntu 20.04!!

Before attempting to upgrade, I removed weird non-proprietary PPA's, like oibaf, and rebooted (should probably have purged them instead of just removing).

I following the official guide here to upgrade from 18.04 to 20.04:

https://ubuntu.com/blog/how-to-upgrade-from-ubuntu-18-04-lts-to-20-04-lts-today

At first, the upgrade would not happen because I "held broken packages". Looking into apt.log and main.log after the failed installation, I saw that xserver-xorg-video-* was causing the problems.

I then tried re-installing a couple of xserver drivers inspired by this thread: 16.04 - How To Purge Intel Default Drivers & Reinstall Intel Graphic Drivers, more specifically:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

It seems that xserver-xorg-core got installed, BUT I get an error for xserver-xorg-video-intel saying "it cannot be downloaded". Then I tried a simple install instead:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel

Returning:

xserver-xorg-video-intel is already the newest version (2:2.99.917+git2005070730.e781d4"oibaf"b).

AHA! That's the "oibaf" PPA I removed earlier! Maybe that's what's messing things up? When I do

apt search xserver-xorg-video-intel

The driver from "oibaf" is the first that shows up as "xserver-xorg-video-intel/now" followed by 5 other drivers from bionic.

xserver-xorg-video-intel-dbg/bionic
xserver-xorg-video-intel-hwe-16.04/bionic
xserver-xorg-video-intel-hwe-16.04-dbg/bionic
xserver-xorg-video-intel-hwe-18.04/bionic-updates,now
xserver-xorg-video-intel-hwe-16.04-dbg/bionic-updates

From here I did a more specific set of install commands:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core-hwe-18.04
sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel-hwe-18.04

Now the "oibaf" drivers dissappeared from the "apt search xserver-xorg-video-intel" output.

And "sudo do-release-update -d" worked! I have my desktop back.

that's great! i'm glad you rescued it! – Giovanni Rodríguez May 11 '20 at 21:50 — Giovanni Rodríguez, May 11 '20 at 21:50

How can I get my display back? xmodmap: unable to open display ''

1 Answers1