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The system is a laptop with nvidia optimus. After an update (many packages including kernel and virtualbox 5), ubuntu 14.04 does not start no more.

Symptoms:

  • boots into grub, Enter key on 14.04, screen turns black, the backlight led turns off, then on, then nothing happens except the fan going on high revs, nothing on the screen (black screen with backlight on)
  • ubuntu 15.10 on another partition starts fine (no virtualbox there)
  • no /var/log/syslog info
  • to restart I need to turn it off
  • purged everything nvdia - no luck
  • forced reinstall virtualbox, no error messages - no go
  • update, upgrade, install -f, autoremove - no difference
  • tried older kernel versions - same thing
  • it starts in recovery mode and I can continue normal boot (this is how I wrote this question).

Any ideas what to try next?

1 Answer 1

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On boot menu I pressed 'e' to edit the way 14.04 starts, deleted "quiet splash" and pressed F10 to start ubuntu in onscreen verbose mode (so to speak).

Soon enough it hanged on a kernel sort of panic which was due to a usb mouse in a different usb plug than usual (it was plugged in a usb 3.0 plug instead of the usb 2.0 that doesn't give any problems with the linux 3.13 kernels used on ubuntu 14.04). Problem solved. The laptop is a Dell Vostro, by the way.

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