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I have the present Linux Ubuntu 16.10. Today, the system acted funny by automatically closing after 1 or 2 seconds. I didn't do anything to the power on or off system. In fact, earlier I made it to 1 hr time limit before blanking out. Please let me know what the problem is.

Hobbesian Thinker
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  • What exactly happens after 1 or 2 seconds? Does the power turn off, as if the plug was pulled & power switch turned off? Or does the screen just go black or to sleep, and moving the mouse wakes it up again? – Xen2050 Apr 12 '17 at 04:31
  • Thanks for the reply. It is like automatically goes to sleep before going black, and asks for the password as if someone asked to sleep the Linux OS. When I enter the password, it does the same. I restarted the system, shutdown and restarted it, but the problem persists. I have a dual boot system with my Windows OS, and I checked the windows and it works just fine. The problem is only with Ubuntu OS. – Hobbesian Thinker Apr 12 '17 at 05:08
  • hmm, sounds like something isn't configured correctly, or some program "broke," maybe something display or window manager related, I'm not sure how to tell exactly what. Any updates done before this happened? New packages installed, major changes? While it's "sleeping" maybe switching to another console (with ctrl+alt+function 1 through 8) may let you run commands (maybe ps auxf) and at least see what's running... I'd hope there's a recent install that can be rolled back though, probably easier ;-) – Xen2050 Apr 12 '17 at 05:15
  • I tried it. Nothing is showing up. Should I reinstall the linux OS again? – Hobbesian Thinker Apr 12 '17 at 21:36

1 Answers1

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Without knowing exactly what's failing it's hard to say what to do to fix it, but it sounds like a display or desktop / window manager problem. But try booting from a good live ISO first, maybe it's a hardware problem.

Reinstalling everything is rather extreme, but it could actually be faster depending on whether you can get to at least a text-only terminal and how familiar you are with terminal-only tools like apt, dpkg, and aptitude (it's a nicer gui-like terminal package manager.

  • First, backup any important data you wouldn't mind having deleted - reinstalling OS's and overwriting homes is rather high-risk for data loss.

If you can login to just a text-only terminal, try these:

  • It's possible some config files in your home are messing up your gui desktop, activating the screensaver & locking the desktop after a second or two. Try adding a new user with
    sudo adduser newguy
    then see if you can log in normally as newguy - if you can, then erase your old home config files and copy over the "good" ones from newguy.

  • Maybe only reinstalling the window manager is something to try, or the desktop packages? If you can log into just a text terminal, you could search with apt and/or dpkg and/or aptitude to see what's installed now, and remove & install again?

    I don't know which ones you're using, but there are some "metapackages" for many desktops, like unity, lxde, xfce, xubuntu-desktop...
    Or packages for just the display managers or window managers, like xfwm4 for xfce, or kwin-wayland or kwin-x11 for k.

    Running dpkg -l should list all installed packages, with short descriptions too (save to file by adding > file or pipe to less with |less), looking in there should be enlightening as to what to try removing & re-installing. Try looking for "manager" or "window" or "desktop" or a common name like xfce, xfwm, unity...
    See this other Q How to list all installed packages for more info, and there are other questions about "what desktop am I using" too.

    Then try apt remove [package] or apt purge [package] followed by apt install [package] with some important-sounding packages.

Depending on the time it takes you to learn the search/install & the success you have, just backing up all data & re-installing the whole OS may be a tempting idea too.

Xen2050
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