12.04 update problem - software re "hardware" update

[sktsee]

On Sat, 27 Sep 2014 14:53:11 -0700, rikona wrote:

> Running 12.04 LTS. Ran a somewhat overdue update with a large number of
> items. At the end of the update, it said I needed to restart, which I
> did. It also offered to do a 'hardware' update which I did not do at
> that time. After the restart, it again offered to do a 'hardware' update
> [HWE], which I did. Apparently this update allows me to get more recent
> kernel updates if I continue to use 12.04, which sounded like a good
> idea. During this hardware update I noticed that a VERY large number of
> system changes were being made. Many, many things were deleted, some new
> kernel related things were installed, and many new or replacement things
> were installed.
> 
> Another restart, and it said it had to run in low graphics mode,
> whatever that is, and I said okay. At this point, the CLI came up. I
> tried starx, which failed miserably with many messages rapidly going by,
> some complaining about video, and comments such as "no such file".
> A reboot gave me the same thing again.
> 
> So here I am at the CLI with no idea how to restore the functionality I
> had previously. Since this was supposedly just a simple software update,
> I did not do a system backup before hand - big mistake! What do I need
> to do to figure out what the problem is and fix it?
> 

Immediately after a reboot, check the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file. Look, or 
grep for lines that have (EE) in them and post what you find. Or, you 
could install the package pastebinit and then paste your Xorg.0.log file 
to paste.ubuntu.com so that the list can examine the whole file. Here's 
the command line to do that:

$ pastebinit -a rikona -b "http://paste.ubuntu.com" /var/log/Xorg.0.log

It'll return with a link like "http://paste.ubuntu.com/38472/" (the 
number will be different)  which you can post to the list 

-- 
sktsee