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total newbie here. My old XP box died last week; bought a used HP 6000 Pro with integrated VGA. Decided to go single boot Ubuntu, had a cd made for me. All was going well. Partitioned the disk as follows:

sda1: 32G primary swap
sda2: 32G primary / ext4
sda3: Extended
sda5: 8G logical /tmp
sda6: 28G logical /var
sda7: 100G logical /usr
sda8: 200G logical /home
sda4: 100G primary /dos

Installed standard from cd, then

sudo apt upgrade all

Then installed Synaptic, added multiverse and restricted repos, Cinnamon, gcc, g++, blender...

And there I hit a snag: blender refused to run withou a gpu. Now, I intended to buy a Radeon and a wide screen with FreeSynch, but I don't have the money yet (unemployed), so I figured why not move the videocard from the XP box.

I tried the card first, see if it would auto-detect. The card is 4.5" format; my new box is 3.5" format, so I had to bend some metal to get the card to plug in. The bios did detect it, and I changed IRQ5 from Intel VGA to Nvidia. Ubuntu was booting until user screen, then froze. So I figured it needed a driver. My old box is Dell Dimension 9200. I believe the videocard is Nvidia GT230 or GT250. Either way, the right package for the driver seemed to be 430.108, so I installed it, and all its dependencies.

When Synaptic finished I got a message that I had to fix something with resume. I had that problem before and managed it by fixing the UUID of my swap partition, sda1; but this time the number was correct. I checked fstab and panicked to see the order of my partitions changed, with comments sayin they were different during installation. I worked hard at restoring the original order of the partitions. Maybe it's not relevant? All the tutorials say fields are separated by a space or tab; nobody clarifies whether multiple spaces or tabs are acceptable. Are they? At the end of the day, I don't think I changed anything important, but when I try to boot with the video card I get a black screen regardless if I'm booting from disk or CD.

Without the videocard I can boot from install cd; but trying to boot from disk I see very fast text messages on the screen, the last of which I think mentions sda1, and then a black screen with a flashing cursor top left.

With the videocard in place, CTRL-ALT-F4 doesn't work for me. Tried it on two consecutive boots. The first boot I hit the 3 keys as the Ubuntu logo came on, and it showed a bit of VGA tex, then went black. Second time I booted it never got to the logo. After a millisecond flash of text it went black and the 3 keys do nothing. Now, without the videocard, the only diff the 3 keys make is going from logo directly to flashing cursor, instead of having to wait a few seconds. I noticed the heatsink on the gpu has a bit of play. I'm willing to give up on using blender. Just want it to work again

mchid
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DanW58
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  • The Ubuntu version is 20.04 or something close to that; totally up to date. As for /var and /tmp being separate partitions it's the result of reading too many recommendations and being a perfectionist without really knowing anything, I guess. – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 02:01
  • The delimiter in fstab is whitespace which means a space, tab or any combination of the two (allowing those of us who need vertical columns to space out so we see the order that makes us happy). I still don't know if you're talking about server, desktop or other, and it's best if you've precise with details, 20.04 or something? could mean a 20.04.1 alpha, a RC, or other daily which is different to a finished or released product (these alternate images are unlikely, but it's best if we're given the specific details of your system) – guiverc Jul 12 '20 at 02:09
  • 20.04 LTS, desktop was and is my intention. – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 02:17
  • I'm currently booted from the cd. If I do a blkid,, I don't see a /dev/sda1 at all there. I see 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, all ext4 (besides /dev/sr0 cd rom), but no swap partition. – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 02:25
  • Found my fstab, first device I have: (can't use carriage return here): UUID=74f4ae6a-0f0f-4e32-890e-3df252ddbc38 none swap sw 0 0 – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 02:30
  • Not sure If I'm supposed to comment or answer. Never seen this paradigm in a bbs. – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 02:36
  • When it boots and then freezes, can you should be able to get a text only console by pressing CTRL+ALT+F4. From there, (with the graphics card plugged in) you should be able to sign in and then run sudo apt update and then sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall just to make sure you have the correct drivers installed. Also, you can run commands to check your disk from there as well so you don't need the CD (that is, if you can sign into the console). – mchid Jul 12 '20 at 02:45
  • With the videocard in place, CTRL-ALT-F4 doesn't work for me. Tried it on two consecutive boots. The first boot I hit the 3 keys as the Ubuntu logo came on, and it showed a bit of VGA tex, then went black. Second time I booted it never got to the logo. After a millisecond flash of text it went black and the 3 keys do nothing. Now, without the videocard, the only diff the 3 keys make is going from logo directly to flashing cursor, instead of having to wait a few seconds. I noticed the heatsink on the gpu has a bit of play. I'm willing to give up on using blender. Just want it to work again – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 03:20
  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu. This is a question answer site. The comments are our channel for asking for clarification. Please edit your question and add all the new information inside the question. – user68186 Jul 12 '20 at 03:29
  • @DanW58 You may need to boot nomodeset to boot with the card until you get the drivers installed. See here for instructions. – mchid Jul 12 '20 at 03:32
  • Also, did you transpose the numbers? The nvidia website says you need version 340.108 but your question states 430.108. – mchid Jul 12 '20 at 03:46
  • Yes, I was writing from memory. I was getting ready to reinstall, but I'll try your nomodeset suggestion first. – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 04:14
  • @user68186, ok, I'm used to people across the www hating when an original post is changed, as it may invalidate many replies to it; but here the idea is to have just two posts: 1 question and 1 answer at the end of the process? I'm not sure what to do now with the comment-dialogue. – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 04:26
  • @DanW58 Also, if you switch to CTRL+ALT+F4, you can switch back to the regular session using CTRL+ALT+F1 and CTRL+ALT+F2. Additionally, you can get a verbose output during boot by removing "quite spash" from the same line in grub that you use to insert nomodeset. Removing "quiet splash" will disable the splash screen and you should see log messages during boot and if the boot process hangs up somewhere, you will see a message telling you what it is getting stuck on. – mchid Jul 12 '20 at 05:08
  • @DanW58 Another thing is that you have to wait until after it boots up to use CTRL+ALT+F4. If you do that during the boot process, it can automatically switch you back to your regular screen after it boots so wait until after the splash screen or wait until after it gets stuck to use CTRL+ALT+F4. – mchid Jul 12 '20 at 05:14

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Sorry guys, I just couldn't take it anymore; I'm reinstalling. Sad, after a full week working on this install, but I was on the verge. This graphics card goes to the trash where it belongs. I can see that upgrading hardware in linux is Hell, so blender will have to wait until I can build a better PC and fresh install a distro on it.

DanW58
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  • One more thing, you really don't need a 32GB swap partition. For 4GB of RAM you only need a 4GB swap partition if you plan on using hibernation. If you don't plan on hibernating, you really don't even need a swap partition as Ubuntu will use a swap file on newer versions automatically without a swap partition. – mchid Jul 12 '20 at 05:16
  • Also, on an older PC, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, or Ubuntustudio all run with less resources than the standard Ubuntu desktop and so they might run better. You can even install one or more of these desktops as a software package through synaptic or apt. Then, you can switch desktop environments on your login screen and keep your regular desktop in case you don't like it. – mchid Jul 12 '20 at 05:25
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    Thanks, good to know abou swap partitions an Lubuntu and Xubuntu. The "reason" I put 32 gigs is I planned to upgrade memory to 16G, which may never happen... Lubuntu and Xubuntu, I'll try them. Thanks! – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 13:36
  • Also, Ubuntustudio and Ubuntustudio desktop is based on XFCE , the same as Xubuntu, except it has some bundled packages for music, graphic arts, photography, etc. The desktop is set up different but it functions the same and is lightweight like Xubuntu. – mchid Jul 12 '20 at 15:21
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    I'm set in lubuntu right now and I love it right out of the box. Haven't even tried any themes, but I love the no-nonsense organization of the icons and menu. Using gdm3 for now; set to try sddm after next reboot. Thanks for the tip; I would have missed out on a lot of goodness. UPDATE: just tried sddm; doesn't do it for me; going back. – DanW58 Jul 12 '20 at 17:27