1

I was running 16.04 on my machine and one day I booted my machine to a black screen. I had seemed to fix this after booting to root console and reinstalling xorg xserver, but I am not a long time linux user and this took me a long time to figure out how to do.

Booted up OK, so I ran updates and created a new backup just in case. Next day it failed to boot again, and I thought screw it, I have a fresh backup, so I completely reinstalled 16.04.

Ran updates, restored my files and settings. My next boot was to a black screen. Ok. Reinstalled 16.04 again, and walked it through the following steps:

  • Changed video drivers to NVIDIA-367. Rebooted OK.
  • Ran apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, some items listed as held back. Rebooted OK.
  • Ran apt update && apt upgrade. Booted to black screen.

I'm not sure what to make of this, and I can't keep reinstalling my OS. I'm a student and I need this machine. Is there some way I can stick to stable updates only, or what other options can I pursue?

Mostafa Ahangarha
  • 4,408
lotuswatcher
  • 45
  • 1
    I think it's fairly obvious there's some compatibility issues with the updated drivers. This has happened to me and I noticed there was a conflict with the updated kernel version. – Matt O. Mar 02 '17 at 20:34
  • I've been continuing to do research since I posted this question, and I found a solution that works. Yes, you are right, it appears to have something to do with the latest kernel. I came across several posts mentioning kernel updates that didn't work, and I followed the advice about changing the grub boot order, and selected the next-to-most-recent kernel to boot. I also had to do some digging, but I figured out how to make grub appear by pressing the shift according to the advice on this post. – lotuswatcher Mar 03 '17 at 23:26

1 Answers1

1

My solution would be to lock the package from updating until the issue is resolved. This way you can continue to update critical software even though that driver may have stability issues.

Hold a package:

sudo apt-mark hold package_name

Remove the hold:

sudo apt-mark unhold package_name
Matt O.
  • 543
  • 2
  • 9
  • Which package should be prevented from being updated? – Mostafa Ahangarha Mar 02 '17 at 21:56
  • It appears to have been a kernel update that wasn't working, and the solution I came across was to use GRUB2 to select a previous kernel. Now that I am familiar with the concept of kernels not always working, I can better troubleshoot and deal with that in the future. Thank you, though, for a very direct answer to my question about avoiding unstable packages. – lotuswatcher Mar 03 '17 at 23:31
  • 1
    @lotuswatcher Selecting a previous kernel is certainly pertinent at times but I wouldn't look at it like a long term solution.

    The alternative is to use the free drivers instead of nvidia's. On my laptop there's little to no difference between nvidia's and the foss ones.

     – Matt O. Mar 06 '17 at 02:25
  • 1
    @MostafaAhangarha it would be the nvidia package. It's the latest nvidia drivers that seem to have a conflict with the 4.4 kernel as seen here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1638990 – Matt O. Mar 06 '17 at 02:28
  • @MostafaAhangarha. I just tried switching my graphics driver to Nouveau and booted into the latest kernel. I should have jotted the kernel numbers themselves down, I will make a note of that next time. It got to the splash screen, but then it froze and did not make it to the login screen. I then tried the previous kernel, which I'd been using OK, and it booted to a black screen. I also tried the next-previous kernel, also black screen. I switched my drivers back to NVIDIA-367 again, I was able to boot into the previous kernel OK. – lotuswatcher Mar 06 '17 at 14:25
  • 1
    @lotuswatcher I think you meant to respond to me. If you look at the bug report I posted you'll see that you can also go into grub, remove "splash" from /etc/default/grub and run sudo update-grub2 that's a possible fix for your specific issue. – Matt O. Mar 06 '17 at 14:30
  • @MattO. My apologies, I am new to this online community. I read through the bug report more carefully, set my display drivers to Nouveau, and tried the following changes to GRUB_CMDLINE_DEFAULT="quiet", "", and "nomodeset". Then I ran update-grub2. After each change, I was actually able to boot into 4.8.0-36, which I could not before, but I was unable to boot into 4.8.0-39 with any of those options. – lotuswatcher Mar 06 '17 at 15:09
  • @lotuswatcher Feel free to mark it as solved then :) – Matt O. Mar 06 '17 at 19:21