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My ubuntu desktop broke down, after I forced a poweroff after it unexpectedly stuck with no responding. With certain reasons ubuntu desktop may not be stable, since it died twice similarly with a working webpage and an idle terminal.

And now I cannot start GUI. It was blank. I can hear the sound of login page, but nothing shows up. The only thing I can do is entering console mode with alt+ctrl+f1, or boot with a live CD.

  1. I cannot access internet with terminal mode. But files were not jumbled, thus the less files I touch the better.
  2. And I didn't set up a rescue mode (is it a good idea? How do you suggest?).
  3. live CD doesn't directly provide a system completeness check & correction option.

What should I do to restore my system?

Similar question: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=972693 but when I inserted the disc, ubuntu cannot detect it (thus the CD is only bootable). I tried:

sudo lshw -short # list mont points
sudo apt-cdrom -d /dev/cdrom add # mount cdrom

but failed to mount.

knh190
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  • @Arronical do you mean in the other option? In the Install option, one is to erase disc and install, another one is to set along with current system, and I haven't checked with the last other option. The system is originally installed as desktop. – knh190 Mar 11 '15 at 11:57
  • something else is to customize partitions. – knh190 Mar 11 '15 at 12:04
  • Anyway, you mentioned me, that I can fix it in CD environment. No need to struggle with the broken desktop - just mount devices and chroot. It worked. Thanks! – knh190 Mar 11 '15 at 12:18

2 Answers2

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1) In Terminal mode can you not even ping www.google.com? or do you just mean you don't have a web browser?

3) You may want to look into the disk checker man fsck

If you can ping google you can check out the answer in this thread for a great detailed explanation of how to create a bootable USB you can install Ubuntu to (and then from). I find this to be the easiest way to install Linux.

With the live CD you should be able to boot up a working version of Ubuntu where you could do this through the GUI, just make sure you select your cd drive in your boot options (Mine is F12) on system startup.

Keeping regular backups is always great practice too (especially before planning to make any system changes)

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  • I cannot connect wireless internet in terminal mode. The manager tool needs to be installed from internet, which I happened not having it. – knh190 Mar 11 '15 at 11:53
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  1. "Try Ubuntu" with live CD
  2. reinstalled desktop, didn't fix

  3. changed own of /home, and reinstalled suspicious nvidia driver by

    sudo chown -R $USR:$USR /home/$USR  # $USR is your username
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get purge nvidia-* && sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

And everything's back to life.

The most suspicious reason was that you accidently changed own of /home to root. And so everything's loaded but cannot work (locked up). So you revert it back.

CAUTION: unity didn't work after I restored my system. And you need to specify your drivers. see my post: Ubuntu 14.04 - mouse can click, but cannot move

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knh190
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