Ubuntu boots to terminal on start up

Question

For a long time I've been unable to get updates due to a "repositories not found" error. Yesterday someone fixed this for me but after installing 94 days worth of updates my system wanted to restart.

It looks like it is booting normally but then it opens a terminal and asks for my login and password.

I had tried Ctrl+ Alt +F7 and startx to no avail.

Here is everything that appears on screen when I turn the computer on.

Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS box-o-doom tty1
box-o-doom login:julian
password:
last login: Sun Jul 8 10:28:02 BST tty1
Linux box-o-doom 2.6.32-41-generic-pae #91-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 13 12:00:09 UTC 20
12 i686 GNU/Linux
Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS

Welcome to Ubuntu!
*Documentation: http://help.ubuntu.com

julian@box-o-doom:~$_

i then tried

dmesg

which produced hundreds of lines all very similar to the first line reproduced here

[    9.453119] type=1505 audit1341742405.022:10):  operation="profile_replace"
pid=743 name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script"

follwed by this at the end

[    9.475880]   alloc irq_desc for 27 on node-1
[    9.475883]   alloc kstat_irqs on node-1
[    9.475890]forcedeth 0000:00:07.0: irq27 for MSI/MSI-X
[    9.760031] hda_code:ALC662 rev1: BIOS auto-probing.
[   10.048095] input:HDA Digital PCBeep as /devices/pci 0000:00:05.o/inp
ut/input6
[   10.862278] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
[   20.268018] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
julian@box-o-doom:~$_

results of startx lots of text scrolls off the screen and i have no way of reading it. but everything i can see is reproduced below

current version of pixman: 0.16.4
    Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
    to make sure that you have the latest version
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) defult setting,
    (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational.
    (WW) Warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: SUn Jul 8 12:02:23 2012
(==) using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(==)using config directory: "/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d"
FATAL: Module nvidia not found.
(EE) NVIDIA: Failed to load the NVIDIA kernal module please check your
(EE) NVIDIA:     systems kernal log for aditional error messages.
(EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module specific error, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

please consult the X.org foundation support
          at http://wiki.x.org
for help
please also check the log files at "/var/log/X.org.0.log" for aditional informati
on
 ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log
giving up
xinit:  No such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to X server
xinit:  No suck process (errno 3): server error
julian@box-o-doom:~$_

Solution

As you can see from your startx output there seems to be a problem with your nvidia drivers:

FATAL: Module nvidia not found.
(EE) NVIDIA: Failed to load the NVIDIA kernal module please check your
(EE) NVIDIA:     systems kernal log for aditional error messages.
(EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module specific error, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

(BTW, you can find the complete X log in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.)

First try to (re)install the drivers via

sudo apt-get install --reinstall nvidia-current

If startx still does not get you to the desktop now, I'd recommend editing your xserver configuration, e.g. via

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and commenting out the line for the nvidia driver, i.e. change

Section "Device"
    ...
    Driver      "nvidia"
    ...
EndSection

to

Section "Device"
    ...
    # Driver        "nvidia"
    ...
EndSection

and close nano with Ctrl+x and y to save the changes.

Then run startx again. Maybe this will start your desktop with a lower resolution than usual and you will not have any 3d acceleration, but you should at least get to the desktop again.

If so, uninstall / reinstall your nvidia drivers via the Additional drivers app in system settings and hopefully that'll fix it. You might have to edit xorg.conf again and uncomment the Driver line manually after reinstalling the driver.

Comments

[Mitch]

Possible Duplicate: askubuntu.com/questions/129709/…

[Jules]

@Mitch as advised in the answer you linked i tried dmesg will add results to original question

[Jules]

i tried startx will add results to question

[Jules]

just tried sudo gedit /etc/default/grub asks for password then shows me (gedit:1454): Gtk-WARNING **:cannot open display:

[Jules]

nvidia drives re-install appeared to work, but then told me module build for the currently running kernal was skipped since the kernal source for this kernal does not seem to be installed startx didn't work. i'm about to try editing my xserver

[Jules]

the file etx/X11/xorg.conf seems empty and i'm confused by "commenting out"

[Jules]

worked out that etx was supposed to be etc and i have a GUI again! not sure if everything is working completely but a huge improvement! thank you!

[Emerson Hsieh]

@nem75 It was a typo...

[nem75]

@Jules yes it should have been etc, fixed that in my answer. Congrats on having the desktop back. The message from reinstalling the drivers you quoted above seems to indicate that there are some other packages missing. You should now try installing the drivers via the additional drivers applet in Ubuntu system settings, as I indicated above. Should work.

[nem75]

@EmersonHsieh IMO nanp -> nano would be a typo, but not recommending a completely different program. Be that as it may your answer does not really have any relation to the question asked anyway, sorry.