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

[Chuck Bearden]

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:29 PM, Charlie Kravetz
<cjk at teamcharliesangels.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Wed, 7 Sep 2011 12:13:06 -0500
> Chuck Bearden <cfbearden at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Charlie Kravetz
>> <cjk at teamcharliesangels.com> wrote:
>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> > Hash: SHA1
>> >
>> > 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
>> [...]
>> >
>> > 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.
>>
>> Thanks for the suggestion. Another user mentioned removing the xorg.conf
>> file. I'll have to figure out how to reinstall the hardware driver without
>> the support of the graphical interface. I suppose I can use dpkg to figure
>> out what's installed and just reinstall all of it.
>>
>> I did search the Ubuntu forums, but somehow I missed that suggestion.
>>
>> Chuck
>>
>
> After renaming xorg.conf, I was able to restart and use gdn to login to
> the gui.

When I delete the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and reboot, my system does
leave me at the gdm login chooser. When I choose

  Applications -> System -> NVIDIA X Server Settings

I get a dialog saying

  You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver.
  Please edit your X configuration file (just run `nvidia-
  xconfig` as root), and restart the X server.

And, I think this must be correct, since my two monitors mirror each
other instead of representing one large desktop as they used to.

When I choose

  Applications -> System -> Additional Drivers

the Additional Drivers dialog tells me that the NVIDIA accelerated
graphics driver (version current) is "activated but not currently in
use."

Output of 'lshw -C display':

  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: G86 [Quadro NVS 290]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci at 0000:02:00.0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0
       resources: irq:52 memory:fa000000-faffffff
memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:f8000000-f9ffffff
ioport:dc80(size=128) memory:fbd00000-fbd1ffff

I appear to have loaded the nouveau driver, and /var/log/Xorg.0.log
seems to confirm this.

So I do what the NVIDIA X Server Settings dialog said: I run
'nvidia-xconfig' as root from the command line, and then I restart the
X server, either by restarting both /etc/init.d/x11-common and
/etc/init.d/gdm, or just by restarting /etc/init.d/gdm, but nothing
appears to happen. tty8, which is where X sessions used to be, is
idle.

Any thoughts as to why the Additional Drivers dialog says that the
nouveau driver is activated but not currently in use? I'm guessing
that this is why the NVIDIA X settings dialog thinks I'm not using an
nvidia driver and so it won't let me configure my dual monitor
situation.

I think I'll try downgrading to the older v 173 nvidia drivers.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Chuck