2

I upgraded Ubuntu to 11.04, but when it rebooted, I saw some command-line stuff, but no GUI. So I downloaded the .iso, and tried to boot from that. Exactly the same thing happened. The GUI is there - I see it when I power off the machine - but it appears to be behind the cli interface.

Is there some keystroke combination that will bring it forward?

3 Answers 3

1

Try pressing Ctrl-Alt-F7, then try Ctrl-Alt-F8 if that doesn't work.

4
  • Ctrl-Alt-F7 didn't do anything, Ctrl-Alt-F8 cleared the screen, but that was all. May 1, 2011 at 2:14
  • OK, tried a few more key combos, found a login prompt with one of them. Logged in, then did a sudo service gdm restart, which appeared to work, giving me a process id. How do I now access the gui (scuse noobness, been a while since I descended to this depth in Linux) May 2, 2011 at 21:51
  • @David: Return by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F7.
    – Hello71
    May 2, 2011 at 23:37
  • So the ubuntu system is up and running - I can access shares on it from my LAN - but it's simply the GUI that doesn't function. I also am unable to ssh to the box from within the LAN. Is there any log I should be looking at to diagnose the problem(s)? May 4, 2011 at 1:28
0

You can try using:

startx

or

service gdm restart
1
  • Neither of those had any effect, unfortunately May 1, 2011 at 2:13
0

Which graphics card is being used? I had a similar problem with a laptop using an intel 830m graphics chip. The video card wasn't being detected by ubuntu and it only booted into text mode. Try this: at bootup, hit F6 to enter the grub command line. Find the partition you will boot. Append this text: "vga=771" to load support for older, non-detectable(?) video cards. This change is only in effect at boot time. If it does effect things positively, you'll need to either permanantly edit the grub config, or use that option during the original install.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .