[xubuntu-users] No video, only console after upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04

[Charlie Kravetz]

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On Wed, 7 Sep 2011 11:42:36 -0500
Chuck Bearden <cfbearden at gmail.com> wrote:

> I finally got around to upgrading to 11.04 today, via the button in
> the upgrade manager. It all seemed to go smoothly, except that when I
> rebooted, I landed at the tty console. tty1-6 are all console login
> screens, and tty7 has the notices from the boot ("Starting Tomcat
> servlet engine" "Checking battery state" e.g.).
> 
> If I start gdm, I get a message
>   gdm start/running, process <pid>
> but no graphical session. 'gdm-binary' does appear in the output of 'ps'.
> 
> My graphics card is an nVidia G68 [Quadro NVS 290] based on the output
> of 'lspci'. From the output of 'lsmod' it looks to me as if there are
> no video drivers loaded. 'dpkg' tells me that the following packages
> with 'nvidia' in their names are installed:
> 
>   nvidia-71-modaliases
>   nvidia-common
>   nvidia-current
>   nvidia-glx-180
>   nvidia-glx-185
>   nvidia-settings
> 
> It's been a long time since I paid attention to low-level graphics
> issues, so forgive me if I'm missing something obvious. Nothing in the
> Natty release notes stuck out to me as relevant.
> 
> dmesg doesn't have anything suspicious to me in it. There is one error
> relating to the probe of i5k_amb.0, but I think that's not a graphics
> driver.
> 
> I did permit the upgrade process to remove packages it said were no
> longer needed. Perhaps my card is no longer supported, and I let go of
> the drivers I needed?
> 
> Any help appreciated!
> Chuck Bearden
> 

Something I found by accident is that sometimes, when upgrading, you
have to remove or rename /etc/X11/xorg.conf to be able to get to the
desktop. Then you must reinstall the hardware video driver, which will
rebuild the xorg.conf file. Reinstall it using System -> Additional
Drivers or Settings -> Additional Drivers, depending on which one is in
the menu for that release.

- -- 
Charlie Kravetz 
Linux Registered User Number 425914          [http://counter.li.org/]
Never let anyone steal your DREAM.           [http://keepingdreams.com]
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