HELP! Cannot use mouse or keyboard any more

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 6 Jun 2015 10:02:22 -0700 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 8:30 AM, Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:
> 
> > At Sat, 6 Jun 2015 07:30:25 -0700 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for
> > general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Answering several suggestions:
> > >
> > > Ctl-Alt-F1 does nothing -- keyboard not working, after all
> > > Keyboard and mouse are USB.  Mobo has no PS/2
> > > Keyboard and mouse are unchanged, but I have tried spares.
> > > I have tried a previous kernel.  No help.
> > > I don't know how to boot into another user or session -- and unless it's
> > > something grub can do, I'm probably unable because of having no keyboard
> > > once the kernel starts
> >
> > If you can get to grub (which you say you can), you should be able to
> > start in
> > single user mode, either by selecting 'rescue mode' or directly editing the
> > boot line (add 'single' to the end of the kernel command line). I don't
> > know
> > if Ubuntu has a way of starting *without* X11 -- with CentOS and many
> > 'older'
> > Linux distros, this would be runlevel 3 (as opposed to runlevel 5) --
> > appending the kernel command line with '3' in grub would do that. Once in
> > single user mode (or non-graphical login mode) you can then change the
> > runlevel and/or disable graphical login (I don't know how to do that with
> > ?Ubuntu, but someone else on this list should be able to help with that).
> > You
> > can also poke around and look at various log files, etc.
> >
> > *I* am NOT a fan of booting up to the GUI login -- all of *my* machines
> > boot
> > up to a (black) console login and I start X with xinit/startx *after* I
> > have
> > logged in, or in some cases don't start X at all (if I do not need to).
> > Also
> > all of *my* machine boot up verbosely, listing all of the start up steps,
> > etc.
> > If there is a problem I can watch for where things are broken.
> >
> > It sounds like you have something fishy going on with the X Server.  And
> > possibly other issues as well, since Apache is not starting either.
> >
> > >
> > > System is on a LAN, but unavailable.  It normally serves apache, but
> > that's
> > > not working either, which has me worried.  I would have thought the
> > server
> > > would be up whether I logged in or not.
> >
> > It should be.  What do you mean by 'unavailable'? Can you ping the machine
> > (eg
> > does ping work or does ping claim the host is 'unavailable'?  If the
> > latter,
> > it sounds like there is a problem with the network interface(s) on the
> > machine.
> >
> > I meant no response at all.  Ping couldn't find it (no route)  But I've
> now booted in text mode (appended "text" to grub "linux" line), and the
> server is working. Maybe I did something wrong the first time.
> 
> Moreover, I can now log in from my laptop too and even do X forwarding, so
> I have a bit more control.

You have mentioned that you seem to have a nVidia video board -- are you using
the 'free' (Xorg) nVidia driver or the 'close source' one from nVidia? If the
latter did you rebuild it when you updated the kernel? Is the version
compatible with your kernel? Is it a suitably up-to-date one? The right one
for your card? It *sounds* like something is borked in the kernel-land part of
the nVidia driver -- something is going south there and crashing things.

Is this meant to be a desktop or a server (you mentioned that you are running 
Apache).  If it is a server box, *I* would completely dispense with X11 
altogether.  Otherwise you might consider a different video card.  nVidia 
cards are nice (?) when they work, otherwise they can be hell to deal with, 
because of the semi-closed source drivers needed for any 'advanced' features.

> 

-- 
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