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I used the upgrade manager to upgrade from 17.04 to 17.10. When I start the machine, I only get a black flickering screen now. I was using the nvidia binary drivers before the upgrade.

NOTE: This question (and answer) relate to a specific issue when upgrading from 17.04 to 17.10 while using Nvidia or AMD binary drivers. You might experience a completely different issue. For that please see the more general question My computer boots to a black screen, what options do I have to fix it?.

mniess
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2 Answers2

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This happened to several users of NVidia or AMD binary drivers (Bug #1705369). You need to re-install the drivers:

  1. Switch to a different terminal (TTY) by pressing CTRL+ALT+F2 and login with your user.
  2. Remove the binary driver by running sudo apt-get purge ^nvidia. AMD users can run amdgpu-pro-uninstall to remove the AMD graphics stack.
  3. If /etc/X11/xorg.conf exists, rename (e.g. sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf{,.bak}).
  4. Disable Wayland completely: edit /etc/gdm3/custom.conf and uncomment the following line # WaylandEnable=false
  5. Reboot Ubuntu with sudo shutdown -r now and you should see the login screen.

You can now install your binary drivers again, either manually (see How do I install the Nvidia drivers) or with the Software Properties GUI. AMD users should refer to the official installation guide for instructions.

After rebooting everything should work as expected.

Note: The new Wayland display server doesn't work with binary drivers, yet, which is why we disabled it in step 4. In the future, when Wayland is fully supported by the binary drivers, you should comment this line again.

mniess
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    Thanks. It's ridiculous how frequently Ubuntu updates result in me seeing a black screen. There needs to be much better support with Nvidia cards. – Ben Watson Oct 21 '17 at 15:12
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    In this case is not a problem, but that purge command should be apt-get purge '^nvidia'. apt suite uses regular expressions, not globbing. See https://askubuntu.com/questions/210976/apt-get-remove-with-wildcard-removed-way-more-than-expected-why , especially Eliah Kagan answer. – Rmano Oct 24 '17 at 17:25
  • Unfortunately it is not a working solution for most of us :( –  Dec 29 '17 at 17:20
  • @Randomize As question and answer state: This is on a specific issue that happens when upgrading to 17.10 while using proprietary drivers. For that sepecific issue, this is the solution. For general black screen trouble-shooting please see the link in the question. – mniess Jan 02 '18 at 10:40
  • @mniess I don't see the difference at all. If you want to something really working for that issue check this: https://gist.github.com/wangruohui/df039f0dc434d6486f5d4d098aa52d07 –  Jan 02 '18 at 10:45
  • Also the black screen is due to the fact the drivers created from repo do not create /dev/dri/card0. –  Jan 02 '18 at 10:46
  • @Randomize That link doesn't explain anything. What step doesn't work out for you exactly? If you uninstall the nvidia driver (and remove any existing /etc/X11/xorg.conf), do you get the login screen? I'll update my answer with some more steps to take. – mniess Jan 02 '18 at 21:31
  • I'll give this a -1 as well , did not fix anything, also does not really help in debugging. I followed instructions and still get a blackscreen. I dont think this is related to wayland, from what I can tell wayland is not running. something in 17.10 has broken my X11 setup too. No idea how to fix or where to find any debugging output – teknopaul Feb 23 '18 at 19:11
  • @teknopaul: This Answer is related to a very specific problem that occurs when upgrading. For general advice on what to do when you get a blank screen, please see the answer linked in the question. – mniess Feb 26 '18 at 12:11
  • what should I do if I can not even switch to a different terminal? – Umut Tabak Mar 03 '18 at 15:47
  • I waited on the screen and it is giving some error lines where one of them is softlockup, CPU#1 stuck for seconds, X is 23, 24, 26 seconds changing – Umut Tabak Mar 03 '18 at 16:00
  • @UmutTabak Please see the link in the question above for general solutions to the problem. – mniess Mar 05 '18 at 15:17
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I had the same problem and reportet a bug already (Bug #1725169). In my case I could locate it to the lowlatency-kernel, that was installed during upgrade without beeing asked. Unfortunately it was the first kernel in grub. Deinstalling this Kernel solved the problem. No need for reinstalling the nvidia-drivers.

mniess
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woko
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