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I posted this on the Ubuntu forums and they had no good answer. I hope you guys have a solution!

On my relatively new install, it's booting into command line instead of X--again.

This is the reason I reinstalled in the first place. This has happened to me three times now.

So, I boot up and it gets past GRUB, past the glowing Ubuntu option, then it prompts me for my username, then password. I run:

startx

And that starts the GUI for about a minute, then it runs the GUI login system.

To add to the mess, the network-applet is not shown in the panel. Additionally, Chrome will not launch (I ran Firefox from the terminal).

What's the problem here?

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"happened before"; it was working correctly for a while, then this started? Did you install a graphics driver perhaps? – RJFalconer Feb 6 '10 at 22:57
No, nothing. Just normal stuff for about a month, then it started doing this. – user27439 Feb 7 '10 at 0:00
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

I'm curious as to what you mean by

So, I boot up and it gets past GRUB, past the glowing Ubuntu option, then it prompts me for my username, then password. I run:

startx

And that starts the GUI for about a minute, then it runs the GUI login system.

I read his as : 1. I boot. 2. I login to terminal 3. I execute startx 4. X starts and I can mess around a bit 5. X gets clobbered by GDM .. the GUI login

If so then for some reason GDM is taking a ridiculous amount of time to launch. Could be authentication backend related or just about anything.

In your place I'd start checking the logs : /var/log/Xorg.0.log /var/log/auth /var/log/daemon /var/log/error /var/log/syslog

At this point we're fishing to try and figure out what's going on on your system.

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Yes, that is the right order. Nothing odd in the logs, I can attach them, if you'd like. – user27439 Feb 7 '10 at 18:00
Well not terribly useful if there's nothing odd in the logs... -_- How about starting gdm manually in debug mode to see if the issue is there ? 1. sudo service gdm stop 2. sudo gdm --debug --timed-exit Hopefully with that you should either a) find some useful logging information and/or b) determine if GDM is slow to launch or if the slowdown happens before that. On another note, can you see the output of the startup scripts when you're booting up ? Does it seem to stall or fail somewhere ? Are you using networked authentication .. ie ldap ? – delerious010 Feb 8 '10 at 0:00
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up vote 0 down vote

Not sure whats the reason. you may want to check logs.

Anyways try this

  1. When starting up, in Grub, choose recovery mode
  2. It should give a menu list to choose various actions
  3. One of the action is setting up X display, try this option.
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Nothing odd in the logs, though I'll try the recovery mode. – user27439 Feb 7 '10 at 18:03
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up vote 0 down vote

If when booting your system it starts ubuntu in Terminal mode, try this:(I suppose you have the latest Ubuntu Karmic Koala)

First: Login via the Terminal(Username & password)

Second: Type:

sudo service gdm start

It should now load the Gnome Display manager with no problems. If you still encounter problems then find solutions in the Ubuntu Forms. I know you've try before but, try again.

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