Ubuntu boots into command line instead of X

Question

I posted this on the Ubuntu forums and they had no good answer. I hope you guys have a solution!

On my relatively new install, it's booting into command line instead of X--again.

This is the reason I reinstalled in the first place. This has happened to me three times now.

So, I boot up and it gets past GRUB, past the glowing Ubuntu option, then it prompts me for my username, then password. I run:

startx

And that starts the GUI for about a minute, then it runs the GUI login system.

To add to the mess, the network-applet is not shown in the panel. Additionally, Chrome will not launch (I ran Firefox from the terminal).

What's the problem here?

Solution 1

Not sure whats the reason. you may want to check logs.

Anyways try this

1. When starting up, in Grub, choose recovery mode
2. It should give a menu list to choose various actions
3. One of the action is setting up X display, try this option.

Solution 2

I'm curious as to what you mean by

So, I boot up and it gets past GRUB, past the glowing Ubuntu option, then it prompts me for my username, then password. I run:

startx

And that starts the GUI for about a minute, then it runs the GUI login system.

I read this as:

1. I boot
2. I login to terminal
3. I execute startx
4. X starts and I can mess around a bit
5. X gets clobbered by GDM - the GUI login

If so then for some reason GDM is taking a ridiculous amount of time to launch. Could be authentication backend related or just about anything.

In your place I'd start checking the logs :

/var/log/Xorg.0.log
/var/log/auth
/var/log/daemon
/var/log/error
/var/log/syslog

At this point we're fishing to try and figure out what's going on on your system.

Comments

[RJFalconer]

"happened before"; it was working correctly for a while, then this started? Did you install a graphics driver perhaps?

[Admin]

No, nothing. Just normal stuff for about a month, then it started doing this.

[James]

Yes, that is the right order. Nothing odd in the logs, I can attach them, if you'd like.

[Admin]

Nothing odd in the logs, though I'll try the recovery mode.

[jonathanserafini]

Well not terribly useful if there's nothing odd in the logs... -_- How about starting gdm manually in debug mode to see if the issue is there ? 1. sudo service gdm stop 2. sudo gdm --debug --timed-exit Hopefully with that you should either a) find some useful logging information and/or b) determine if GDM is slow to launch or if the slowdown happens before that. On another note, can you see the output of the startup scripts when you're booting up ? Does it seem to stall or fail somewhere ? Are you using networked authentication .. ie ldap ?