hello everyone,

this will most likely be somewhat of an improper post, but the truth is that i don't know where to begin. i may need to provide information on a regular basis to get to the answers and solutions. if this is not the proper place to post this, please let me know where to go.

i have limited linux knowledge and skill, so i still consider myself a newbie.

i had recently stopped running oneiric unity 3D because i ran into some problems with it. i started using the gnome desktop instead and sort of liked it while taking my time to figure out my oneiric unity 3D problem.

i did a security update today and had to restart the computer. when it came back on, my gnome desktop reverted to the classic gnome version. my chromium doesn't open, and in fact most windows that do open initialize and then shut down. oddly, sometimes i can open chromium in an incognito window, but not the regular chromium window. i reinstalled chromium but that didn't help.

i can only run synaptic through the command line now but no history of today's changes has been recorded so i don't know where to begin looking for problems. strangely, other histories are recorded. (but not some of the more recent ones). i even attempted to run gnome 3 from the website, which then asks me to connect to the synaptic package manager, but when i do the manager initializes and then shuts down.

sometimes, my home folder stays open; sometimes, not. sometimes programs/windows opened from the file directory stay open; sometimes, not.

i won't be home for another week, where i would feel more comfortable just reinstalling ubuntu. but for now, is anyone able to give me a little guidance to at least get my computer back to previous functioning mode? if i could roll back all the updates that i made today, that would be ideal - but as i said, no history of it has been recorded (at least not where i know to look to find it).

please forgive me for such a long message with next to no real information. i jut don't know what information i need to include. plain and simple, i did a security update today and then when i rebooted nothing was the same. i went to the update manager a few times to see if there was a correction or bug fix, but nothing has come up yet. (after reinstalling chromium, i found a chromium update through the update manager but when i click to install, it won't do it.) [edit: i was able to download the chromium updates but that has nothing to do with the problem. i was worried though that not being able to update them meant there as also a problem with the updating feature overall.]

thank you for your attention and help. i appreciate it.

brad

The detail you left out is the errors.

I would set initdefault to 3 in /etc/inittab, and then run startx > some_file 2>&1 to trap startup errors
dmesg |tail can also be useful. If you find errors, post them (Don't post miles of output that looks ok)

Pick some programs that misbehave(e.g. synaptic), and run ldd synaptic |grep found
The correct situation is no output, but check by leaving off the |grep bit that everything is ok, as it could be complaining about versions or something.

1 members found this post helpful.

This won't work, Ubuntu (like most Debian derivatives) is using runlevel 2 by default, while runlevels 2-5 are all the same. To stop X you have to open a terminal (or switch to a VT using Ctrl+Alt+F1) and launch the commandSince you are using Gnome it may be possible that you have to replace lightdm with gdm or gdm3 in that command.

1 members found this post helpful.

okay, great. thank you! i will include that information in a post soon. i don't always know where to look for errors, so now i have a place to start. i'm not sure i understand everything you said or how to go about actually running it, but i have a general idea.

any general idea of how this could have happened? is there a general reason why an upgrade could interfere with the regular workings, such as a bug in the upgrade or an incomplete upgrade?

thank you, again; i appreciate it.

oh, okay. so i should try that instead? alright. thank you!

Just for clarification, the command I gave does nothing more than shutting down the graphical interface and leaving you with a command line interface. After that is done try the startx command from business_kid.

i was just about to ask "what next?"

it did shut down the gui, but i didn't know how to escape it nor could i run a command in it. this terminal is not like the same one i use when i use ctrl+alt+t. i don't know how to run a command line in this tty terminal and what i type doesn't do anything. i get a black screen with a blinking cursus prompt and the script that told me what was being shut down. the cursor is blinking on its own line with no script or information before it like it shows in the ctrl+alt+t terminal.

remember, i'm a newbie (still) so common things aren't yet that well-known to me. i love doing the work and the learning, but i might need more basic information along the way that might be old hat to others.

okay, i ran the startx command in the ctrl+alt+t terminal and it paused for a second then nothing happened. the regular prompt returned but no data was presented. did i do it in the wrong type of terminal?

also, eventually, whatever program i am using shuts down. it might run for a few minutes but it then just vanished.

Sorry should have written that. After shutting down the GUI press Alt+F1 to get a login prompt. Now log in using that prompt. Keep in mind that the dialog will not show any reaction when typing in your password, this is normal behavior, just type it in blindly and press the Enter key. Then proceed with the suggestions from business_kid.

ah yes, that is the code i needed. thank you! i'll get right on it and see what happens. (and believe it or not, i actually do know that my password won't show when typing it. probably the only thing that i do know. )

alright, i ran the startx command and then the gui started up again. i tried chromium and got the same result as before: it seems to initialize then it shuts down. so where do i get the error information? and how do i run the ldd on chromium?

i'm really confused about all of this stuff. essentially, the update messed up my system. i get the feeling that there are now some incompatibility problems, or something needs to be updated that wasn't updated. *sigh*

okay, where do i go from here? i need to find a list of errors to post.

If you have used startx in the way business_kid suggestedyou should have a file called somefile in your users directory. That should contain all errors and statusmessages. Look through it and post obvious errors here.
For the ldd thing: First you have to find out where your chromium binary is located, this can be done with That command will possibly return something like /usr/bin/chromium or similar, that is the output we need to use with the ldd command. Assuming that the output is /usr/bin/chromium the ldd command would look like thisPost the output of that command here, too.

i ran the startx command and it returned me to the gui (this time, just the desktop background appears and nothing else; there are no icons, status bar, clock... nothing is visible except the desktop background). no information was returned. and i have no clue if i should restart my computer or if i should use ctrl+alt+t to get to a command prompt. there is currently nothing usable on my screen as it appears now.

before i did that, i ran the 'which chromium' command. it returned nothing.

i rebooted my computer and then looked through some folders. this is what i found for the 'some_line' error document:

The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
> Warning: Type "ONE_LEVEL" has 1 levels, but <RALT> has 2 symbols
> Ignoring extra symbols
Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server
xinit: connection to X server lost

waiting for X server to shut down ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

if i'm not mistaken, this error is related to the change in keyboard configuration that i have, nothing else.

Nothing wrong with that. No errors here.

I always forget that Chromium is a game and therefore the binary of the browser is most likely named chromium-browser, try it again with that name.