Broken Ubuntu 17.10

Question

I was attempting to upgrade my Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 dist to Ubuntu 17.10, I ran

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Everything went well as far as the console output for the download and installation. I chose yes to all options (download, install new, remove unused) Then on boot I get a number of [ OK ] messages and it then hangs. The last three OK messages are as follows:

[ OK ] Created slice User Slice of gdm.
Starting user Manager for UID 120...
[ OK ] Started Session c1 of user gdm.
[ OK ] Started User Manager for UID 120.

How do I troubleshoot what the issue is? Thanks for any tips/advice.

Solution

First of all. Use the update-manager to do the upgrade (or do-release-upgrade in the terminal). It takes care of many problems that can occur by just doing a dist-upgrade.

Secondly, the same thing happened to me. I had the nvidia binary drivers installed and they didn't work anymore. I switched to a different TTY to log in (ctrl+alt+2) and removed the binary drivers. After that I was able to boot Ubuntu and reinstall them.

Comments

[Panther]

Hit crtl-alt-F3 and log in. Boot a 17.10 live usb to test hardware. Identify your graphics card and driver in use .... all these would be a start. apt-get dist-upgrade does NOT upgrade 17.04 -> 17.10 so you probably upgraded the 17.04 kernel.

[Panther]

To upgrade see - > wiki.ubuntu.com/ArtfulAardvark/… . I HIGHLY ADVISE you read ALL the release notes first and strongly suggest testing a live 17.10 flash drive and fresh install due to the number of changes 17.10 brings.

[edencorbin]

All good answers. I managed to boot in by moving my HD to a different computer (that notably did not have nvidia card I suspect). In any case some things were updated, others were not, I decided to clean install, and 100 apt-get installs later, am happy with the result.

[Juan Leni]

I could log in and use the computer by removing nvidia drivers... but if I reinstall the drivers them I get back to this issue

[GeorgeOfTheRF]

How do I remove nvidia binaries

[mniess]

@ML_Pro check out this question