Boots into TTY1 after upgrade to Xubuntu 12.04, can't start X
 

Hi,

Just did an upgrade from Xubuntu 11.10 to 12.04, and like the title says, it now boots stright into TTY1. After logging in I pressed Alt + F7 to try to get to the GUI, and it gives me a list of a bunch of processes that it is stopping, ending with "stopping save kernel messages [OK]," and then it just hangs. All the stopping processes messages say "OK" with no failures.

If I enter 'startx' (after restarting to get past the last stage) it gives a bunch of data about the XORG server and then says

Please help!

edit: I also just tried this:

followed by

And then tried to start x again. Same thing as before. Only now it says additionally:

Not too sure about Ubuntu or Xubuntu but never the less it looks like there is no video driver installed for your card. Secondly you might want to check out your /etc/inittab & make sure it default run level is set to 4 & not 3. I'm not much of a Ubuntu user but that might help.

Even if my default run level were 3, it should still startx x on command. :(

At first, Ubuntu, as almost any Debian derivative, uses runlevel 2 only, so a runlevel change has no effect at all.

To your problem, it seems that there is a problem with your graphics driver. So I would at first try to remove that driver. That includes removing (or better renaming) the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
Then restart the system. If it still starts to CLI only try Please post any error messages you get if that doesn't work.
If it starts to the GUI you can use the "Additional Drivers" application to install the proprietary driver.

@ TobiSGD: I renamed xorg.conf to xorg-renamed.conf and restarted. There was no change. I tried

and it said "FATAL: Module off not found."

Thanks!

That is weird, nouveau should be installed by default. It seems to me that something weird happened here, which, sadly, is not that uncommon when upgrading X/K/L/Ubuntu to a newer version.
In this case I would recommend to make a fresh install of the OS.

Have a look at the official Ubuntu help pages on installing the nVvidia binary drivers.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Bi...erHowto/Nvidia

Your problem is likely that your screen resolution was not detected, and/or you may need to use the "nomodeset" option in grub (or grub2). But you can/should start with the info in the guide...

@TobiSGD: Thank you. I was afraid of that. The upgrade process appeared to go smoothly, so I don't know what went wrong. But something sure happened.

I am in the process of copying the contents of my home folder to a flash drive so I can reinstall by disk. At least I am getting practice using the command line.

If you are still there, could you tell me one more thing? I have about 61 GB of data I did not back up before this upgrade (silly I know, but my external hard drive is full). I searched in my closet and I now have two 32 GB flash drives that I can store the data on. Is there a simple command to copy the data from my home folder to the flash drives (I do know how to mount them) so that it will fill one of them up and then prompt me to insert the other one? There probably isn't, but I thought I would ask, because I am having a hard time figuring out file sizes under the command line in order to manually see which files will fit on each flash drive.

Thank you.

Not that I am aware of. It may be easier for you if you install a commandline file-manager, like midnight commander.

Thank you. That will help a lot.

Suggestion on reinstall,...

Make /home a separate partition, so that in the future, you can just reformat the root / partition when upgrading or moving to another distro.

On most distros, you'll have to create a new user and migrate your data into the new account, but that's easier & better than having to backup to a flash drive and reformat a single partition.

JaseP is right, having a separate /home partition may be very convenient. Just keep in mind that having a separate /home is no substitute for the backups you make regularly of your important data.

Yes, regular backups are important,... but when the machine is running "crippled," not convenient to do at all... Backups are better run when the machine is healthy, and they can be done automatically, as well.

I suggest that you be selective about what you're copying over,... There may be a lot of redundant data. Plus, 61 GB of transfers can take hours...

Yes, I usually do make a separate home partition, but I just installed this hard disk recently to test after another hard disk failed on me. I wasn't sure the old hd was the problem and I wanted to leave this one in with only a standard partition scheme so I could see if my errors continued. So I put in this one, which is an old 70 GB spare I had lying around. I thought I would replace it as soon as I figured out I needed to, and I didn't think I would be putting any data on it. I guess time just got away from me.

I will definitely be putting home on its own partition this time around.

Unfortunately I cannot deselect any of the 61 GB. It is all media that I need to keep.

You are right, though, I really do need to set up a better backup system. It is mostly a matter of getting the storage space. I have a lot of media that I need to store, and right now I am shopping around for a larger disk. I was thinking of getting two 1 to 1.5 TB hard drives and using one for backup. If I did go for something like this, what sort of backup system would you suggest? rsync?