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My laptop was working perfectly, but suddenly today I turned it on and after GRUB, the Plymouth splash flashed and then the screen went black with a blinking cursor. After blinking like 6 times, the cursor disappears and the screen stays completely black. Ubuntu won't boot after that and the computer is non-responsive to Ctrl+Alt+Del, so I have to reboot by holding the power button and then turning it back on.

I tried using the Recovery Mode to see if it was a problem with X or whatever... But it always seemed to crash when it was going to ask me to login. I did some research on the Internet and then tried holding Shift while booting up and then pressing 'e' when GRUB showed up. I then removed "quiet splash" and tried with "text" there. Computer booted up and I didn't get any errors. Logged in with my user and password, and then did a manual startx. After that the laptop starts and runs perfectly, as I'm using it right now to write this message.

I think the problem is something in gdm, but I don't know what. I thought maybe it was a problem with Plymouth, but I imagine failsafex from Recovery Mode would skip Plymouth and just send you to log in.

Does anybody have any idea how to get gdm to work again? Or any idea what could be wrong with it?

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  • Do you see any relevant (gdm or X related or other errors) entries in the logs? (/var/log/syslog, /var/log/Xorg.0.log)
    – arrange
    Sep 19, 2011 at 7:51
  • I found this on /var/log/syslog gdm-binary[808]: WARNING: Unable to load file '/etc/gdm/custom.conf': No such file or directory. And this gdm-binary[808]: WARNING: Unable to find users: no seat-id found And there seems to be quite some other errors... gdm-simple-slave[908]: CRITICAL: Error while compiling regular expression DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=(.+)#012DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID=([0-9]+) at char 0: unknown option bit(s) set It seems like those are the errors that seem to repeat the most, and a couple others.
    – TanoPiloni
    Sep 19, 2011 at 16:18

2 Answers 2

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If plymouth displays but gdm fails to start up at boot, the system may have left you on a blank VT (virtual terminal) and the end of the boot sequence. You can try pressing Alt+F1 (or Alt+F2) to switch terminals and get to a text login. (plymouth in Ubuntu boots on VT7, the same VT used for the X display; VTs 1-6 are reserved for text console logins.)

You can also try booting without any of the 'quiet', 'splash', or 'text' options. If this allows gdm to start, then there is a bug in the interactions between plymouth and gdm affecting your system. In that case, you should file a bug report against Ubuntu in launchpad:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+filebug

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  • I think that's it, forgot to update that I tried doing that and it seemed to let me log in via text. But now I have reinstalled the system. Thanks though!
    – TanoPiloni
    Oct 14, 2011 at 2:02
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I would reinstall gdm and libpcre3.

If that doesn't help, please post the full logs somewhere and provide the link to it here.

Source:

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-gnome-maintainers/2011-February/075775.html

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  • Ok. Did that. Now it's stuck at bootup saying "fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2 /dev/sda4:clean, 306369/2899968 files, 7123600/11599365 blocks init: ureadahead-other main process (713) terminated with status 4 Starting AppArmor profiles Skipping profile in /etc/apparmor.d/disable: usr.bin.firefox [OK] Setting sensors limits [OK]. After that it doesn't say or do anything else. It has a blinking cursor, but at least it reacts if I Ctrl+Alt+Del it. I'll use a LiveUSB to get my log files and paste them up here in a bit.
    – TanoPiloni
    Sep 19, 2011 at 23:29
  • pastebin.com/bTAgGybD - Syslog. pastebin.com/8BKCtPwm - Xorg.0.log
    – TanoPiloni
    Sep 20, 2011 at 2:44
  • I don't see any other problems than the already mentioned. Could you also post /var/log/apt/term.log and dpkg -l libpcre3?
    – arrange
    Sep 20, 2011 at 18:55
  • Ok, I'll get those. Can I do dpkg -l libpcre3 from the Recovery Mode? Cuz Ubuntu isn't even booting up on text mode now.
    – TanoPiloni
    Sep 20, 2011 at 21:05
  • Yes, it's the same.
    – arrange
    Sep 20, 2011 at 21:21

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