X session is preventing me from booting

palacequeen66 · 09-23-2022, 02:34 PM

Hi
I was trying to start a zoom conference on my desktop but I guess I didn't have the right kernal for it? Any who, a x session error message showed up and stated it would end with an error, and I clicked ok. Now my desktop won't boot my operating system and I have this dark screen. How do I get my desktop to boot?

mrmazda · 09-23-2022, 04:05 PM

Which distro are you using? What is your GPU? You haven't provided any useful information. We are not clairvoyant.

At your Grub menu, strike the E key, navigate to the end of the line that begins with linu, append a space and 3, then proceed with boot. You may then be provided a login prompt from which you can login and examine logs for error messages:

Code:

sudo journalctl -b -1
less /var/log/Xorg.0.log

If there is no journal found:

Code:

sudo mkdir /var/log/journal

Then attempt rebooting normally once, & then reboot again with 3 appended to find journal persisted from previous boot.

frankbell · 09-23-2022, 08:20 PM

mrmazda's request for more detail is quite on point.

You could try booting to a Live CD/USB, mounting the HDD, and checking the log files, particularly /var/log/boot.log (if that's not present, /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog, depending on your distro) and /var/log/Xorg.0.log. That might give you some hint as to what's gone awry. If you can find the error message that you refer in your post, that would be a plus.

uteck · 09-23-2022, 10:45 PM

I have used Zoom on Linux before with no problems. Given that you had an error in X, it seems there is something else at play.
Since you get a dark screen, the OS may still be working, just messed up graphics. Try switching to a console by pressing CTRL and F1 at the same time. You should get a login prompt, then you try starting X manually with startx and see if that gives a useful error message.

mrmazda · 09-23-2022, 11:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by uteck

Since you get a dark screen, the OS may still be working, just messed up graphics. Try switching to a console by pressing CTRL and F1 at the same time. You should get a login prompt, then you try starting X manually with startx and see if that gives a useful error message.

If graphics is "messed up", it means most likely the active display belongs to a broken X. When this is the case, Ctrl-F1 won't work, possibly for two reasons. Reason certain is that Ctrl-ALT-Fn is the only way to switch. Reason possible is some distros and/or display managers put X on tty1 instead of 7 or 5 or 2 or 8, in which case you wouldn't be attempting a switch. 3 & 4 are virtually certain to be free, usually 2, 5 & 6 as well. In most GUI installers, 2 works for certain.

palacequeen66 · 09-26-2022, 12:58 AM

I would like to thank everyone for your suggestions during my issue with my desktop. I solved the issue by going into bios, changing the boot order then restarting my computer. I then installed Bleachbit to clean out the tmp file. I'm new to Ubuntu and coding so it takes a while for me to figure out what I need to do. As far as GUI, I'm still learning the terms