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My system is in big trouble - fully my fault. The battery on the computer died while the lid was closed and the PC was 'sleeping' and I think that corrupted some files. Once I plugged it in and powered it up I had a "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error. I followed this post: How to fix "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error?

However I did not follow it correctly. The commands I ran were: sudo apt-get install nvidia-current and sudo apt-get install nvidia-updates. The reason I did not enter an nvidia version is that I did a bunch of research on here and all the commands I ran in terminal to figure out the version kept outputting nvidia-current... so I thought maybe Ubuntu would install the correct driver version on it's own. My fault. Stupid. I know. During the install process a line cam up that showed what driver I was using (the right driver), and it was nvidia-340. As I was watching, I noticed that was not the driver that got installed.

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At this point my computer comes up with a grey screen and a mouse. No login, CTRL+ALT+F1 does nothing and the computer is unusable. so I am forced to shut down. I did this at least 8 times and the results are consistent. enter image description here

I have many generic recovery kernel options and am able to get here without much issues: enter image description here

In the recovery screen I tried the option root. I logged in, tried to turn on the wlan0 card (which I can see but cannot get to work). I used this post Connect to WiFi network through Ubuntu terminal - I was able to bring the wlan0 card up but it did not see any wireless networks. Then I tried 'network' but that did not open a terminal. I could not type any commands.... Well I could but they did not execute.

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'FailsafeX' option does not work either.

My question is "how do I get a terminal with networking from the recovery menu?". I want to run sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-340 as I think that will fix my problem. My other question is "do you have any other ideas to revoer my PC from the recover menu?".

Maybe I could use the live CD and run commands to affect my system from the live CD's Terminal?

Saying "I really appriciate your help!" is an understatement.

Please include all the terminal commands I need to run if you answer because I am not a terminal pro (put mildly).

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Mike
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3 Answers3

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At the recovery menu, select "network - enable networking"

Select that option, and confirm the request to remount the root filesystem in read-write mode. After some status text flashed by, you should arrive at the menu again, but with network drivers loaded. From there, select the option root to "drop to [a] root shell prompt."

Once that is done you can try running apt-get commands.

Nisheet
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  • when I follow your instructions I am not returned to the recovery menu where I began. I simply get a blinking cursor. Any advice? – Mike Jan 11 '17 at 14:34
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What are the chances that I would need both answers to find a solution to this problem?! Thanks to Nisheet and guntbert for your answers! you guys really helped. However each answer on it's own did not suit my problem: Nisheet's network option froze the my PC in it's flawed state, and guntbert could not possibly know I have no access to hardwired internet (wifi only). I did try his answer with "wlan0" instead of "eth0" but gave up pretty quick because I had a different solution in mind.

So.. if you ever crap out your 14.04 system because of an NVIDIA issue, read on...

(1) from Nisheet's answer I learned that selecting "Networking enable" loads system drivers... thats when I realized that if I delete all the NVIDIA drivers, I will be able to restore my system.

(2) from guntbert's answer I learned that typing mount / -o remount,rw when in the root terminal (last option on recovery menu) authorized me to modify the system files.

(3) Then I ran apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*which I got from here: How can I uninstall a nvidia driver completely ? and all my NVIDIA drivers that were preventing the O/S from running properly were deleted!

(4) reboot PC and now you are using a non proprietary driver.

I am now back to square one with the original problem - and I have never been so happy. Thanks for the other people who posted the answers.

Sorry about the word count... I keep it detailed just in case I need to reference this again.

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Mike
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The menu items in the recovery menu try to provide something useful, but sometimes fail. You can configure your system completely from the root shell prompt though.

  • use the menu option root --- drop to root shell prompt

  • mount everything in read/write mode 

    #mount / -o remount,rw

  • check existing network interfaces

    #ip link

    I get two entries

    1: lo: .....

    2: eth0: ..... state DOWN ....

  • now enable the interface #2

    #ip link set up eth0

  • due to some quirk you must assign an IP-address (it doesn't really matter which one you chose) or dhclient will not cooperate

    #ip address add 169.254.1.1/16 dev eth0

  • now invoke dhclient in debug modem so that you see what it is doing and what address you get (I assume you have a working DHCP-server in your network) 

    #dhclient -d

    When it has done it's thing break with CTRL + C and check with ip ad that you got a good IP-address and with ip r that you got a good default route. (Don't worry about the additional IP-address you configured).

The nice thing of using dhclient is that you even get DNS correctly configured. So you will be good to go and install whatever you need. (maybe you need apt update before everything works).

guntbert
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