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After coming back from a 2 week holiday, I discovered that I couldn't get to my desktop PC's Ubuntu desktop. After entering user and password information, the information is accepted but the screen becomes a blank purple, and the mouse disappears.

What I've tried so far:
1. I can boot into CLI by adding a '3' to the appropriate line in grub.
2. I can log in remotely via ssh.
3. I can get a remote desktop GUI.

What hasn't worked:
4. Adding 'nomodeset' to the linux line in grub. If I do this, my screen goes black after logging in. (I can still SSH in and RDP in.). If I press the return key, I see a white X in the middle of the screen. I can get a shell with Ctrl+Alt+F3.
5. I messed about with recovery mode, but it didn't seem to help.

System is fully updated including new kernels (I now have kernels 5.0.0-27, 5.0.0-25, 5.0.0-23).

My system: Dual boot Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS & Win 7. Ubuntu has ubuntu-drivers-common installed.

Thanks

Serge

1 Answer 1

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I had the same problem with the 5.0.0-25 and 5.0.0-27 kernels after a recent update. In my case, I could log on if I booted with kernel 4.18.0-25 (by holding down the shift key at boot time and selecting that version in Grub advanced options), but I got the same behavior that you described with the later kernels.

It turns out that this is the same problem as described in this thread. It's a problem with the Wayland display server protocol. You can fix it by disabling Wayland.

sudo vi /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

(or use nano instead of vi). Then uncomment this line by removing the preceding #:

#WaylandEnable=false

That fixed it for me.

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