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I'm running ubuntu 14.04 on a Acer E17 laptop. From one to another the computer seems to freeze during the boot sequence. It boots to grub without an issue, but when I select Ubuntu it seems to freeze on a black screen. No indication as to what it's doing or any error code. Normally it would display the word Ubuntu with 5 dots beneath it that change from white to red.

If I boot the recovery boot (of the same kernel) and in recovery immediately hit resume it boots normally and I can login.

I already tried to downgrade some recent updates using synaptic, but that did not help. The next thing I tried is to try to create some boot logs with bootlogd, but /var/log/boot.log remains empty. Does anyone have an idea where to go next?

Edit: after a couple of days /var/log/boot.log and /var/log/boot have some information, but no errors of any kind.

cat /var/log/boot produces this output: http://pastebin.com/FEjBveEG

cat /var/log/boot.log produces this output: http://pastebin.com/iycLg0p0 (formatting is off, no idea why, it isn't in the output)

1 Answer 1

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Ubuntu actually waits for all the essential drivers and environment application to load before log you in. In my case, I intended to overwrite the default (lightdm unity) with gnome-shell, bit it failed and the boot sequence was waiting infinitely for it to run. So I need to rollback my changes but there isn't much i can do since I cant actually get myself to terminal (the "shift" + boot didn't work).

Here's what I did to resolve the issue:

  1. Plugged in my usb bootable ubuntu and ran trial version.
  2. Browsed through the bootdrive and edited /etc/X11/default-display-manager.
  3. It didn't allow me to write so I assigned writable permission to it with sudo chmod 777 /etc/X11/ -R.
  4. Then I changed the line /usr/sbin/gdm to /usr/sbin/lightdm and the rebooted. By doing this I rolled back the changed from gnome-shell to lightdm, and I saved myself from reinstalling the system.
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  • you don't need to change the permissions in step 3 -- simply use sudo with your editor to edit the file. this will avoid any future problems caused by incorrect permissions.
    – amc
    Jun 15, 2016 at 15:45
  • yea ,i would have but i dont know why,the changes i made with sudo nano never been updated..so i just went to more obvious way of doing it.
    – Ry Van
    Jun 15, 2016 at 17:05

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