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I've been running 12.04 on a NVidia GPU. I attempted to install ATI's proprietary catalyst drivers and a second GPU. Now the X-desktop will not start.

  1. How do I refresh the borked desktop?
  2. Can NVidia and ATI's HD series coexist?

"Will not start" may be a misnomer. The background comes up but the (taskbar?) on the left doesn't come up and the icons on the desktop can't be clicked. After a timeout I get a password request but then the desktop no longer shows.

I found a message from modem-manager trying to start saying it can't find /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket. That may or may not be helpful

lspci:

03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GK106 [GeForce GTX 650 Ti] [10de:11c6] (rev a1) Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Device [3842:3650] Kernel driver in use: nvidia Kernel modules: nvidia_319_updates, nvidia_304, nvidia_304_updates, nouveau, ? nvidiafb

03:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GK106 HDMI Audio Controller [10de:0e0b] (rev a1) Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Device [3842:3650]

06:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cedar [Radeon HD 5000/6000/7350/8350 Series] [1002:68f9] Subsystem: Hightech Information System Ltd. Device [1787:2291] Kernel modules: radeon 06:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cedar HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5400/6300 Series] [1002:aa68] Subsystem: Hightech Information System Ltd. Device [1787:aa68] Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

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4
  • We need the logs of the Xorg server and the drivers that you installed along with the specs (aka lspci -nnk | grep -A5 VGA) of the video cards. The xorg log you can find it at /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
    – Braiam
    Dec 4, 2013 at 4:09
  • dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16659635/Xorg.0.log
    – b_borden
    Dec 4, 2013 at 5:35
  • Can you edit your question, also do not use drop box since some users can't access dropbox.
    – Braiam
    Dec 4, 2013 at 12:39
  • Xorg.o.log is too big to insert into the question and the dropbox link is a public share. Why can't you read it?
    – b_borden
    Dec 4, 2013 at 20:28

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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I've fixed the problem.

According to answer #1 at Ubuntu 12.04 - default Radeon driver does not work at all there were some missing drivers.

To get hardware acceleration (tested on 12.04 Precise Pangolin), you need to add four more packages:

sudo apt-get install xvba-va-driver libva-glx1 libva-egl1 vainfo

After installing them, the desktop successfully completed initialization on my nVidia display (which has been plugged in all along). I suppose that was the "Magic" mentioned above. Both devices show up in lspci but I have not yet tried out two monitors. Moreover CTRL-ALT-F1 no longer opens a terminal so I can't say everything is perfect yet.

03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GK106
[GeForce GTX 650 Ti] [10de:11c6] (rev a1)       Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp.
Device [3842:3650]      Kernel driver in use: nvidia    Kernel modules:
nvidia_319_updates, nvidia_304, nvidia_304_updates, nouveau, nvidiafb

03:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GK106 HDMI Audio
Controller [10de:0e0b] (rev a1)         Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Device
[3842:3650]

-- 06:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cedar [Radeon HD 5000/6000/7350/8350 Series]
[1002:68f9]     Subsystem: Hightech Information System Ltd. Device
[1787:2291]     Kernel driver in use: radeon    Kernel modules: fglrx,
radeon 06:00.1 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
[AMD/ATI] Cedar HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5400/6300 Series] [1002:aa68]
        Subsystem: Hightech Information System Ltd. Device [1787:aa68]
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0

Not sure about coexisting without lots of magic, but to get the nVidia stuff going again, try:

Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to a virtual terminal (I assume you just have a blinking cursor with a failed X), log in and then run:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia* 
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

And that should get you going again.

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2
  • Did you mean install? sudo apt-get install nvidia-current does nothing useful (makes no changes). X is only half-failed. (see edited question - above).
    – b_borden
    Dec 4, 2013 at 18:38
  • Yes, I missed that in my cut-n-paste editing. Changed to what I initally meant. Odd about the Ctrl-Alt-F1. How about Ctrl-Alt-F2? If you can get the virtual terminals to work you might try apt-get purge on all these packages (nvidia and the "magic" ones) and then install them again, perhaps in a different order.
    – Joseph Santaniello
    Dec 5, 2013 at 18:20
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To reinstall a broken GUI-Desktop:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt autoremove

sudo apt remove ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop

References:

Reinstall Gnome

Ubuntu boots to black screen with cursor after upgrade (from 18.04 to 20.04)

Ubuntu boots to a black screen with a blinking cursor after upgrading from 14.04 to 15.10

Press ALT + F3 or F4 or F5 to enter a Terminal.

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