Can't login after upgrading graphics card

Question

Hello everyone in Ubuntu Land,

I am having problems with logging in to my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS user. I was away from my computer for a few weeks and came back with a new graphics card, a GeForce GTX 960. I inserted it, system boots normally to login screen, but after entering my password, the screen only shows the default Ubuntu background and the mouse cursor. I cannot access the terminal.

I tried logging in with the Guest account, and it did the same thing, except this time it tells me the volume 'boot' has 0 space left.

Is the problem connected to the graphics card? How can I fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have an HP Workstation xw4600 Base Unit with 4 GB memory. I am running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit.

Edit: This isn't a duplicate of the Unity player causing the dash to not appear, as my root repository is full and I cannot remove old kernels.

Switched back to my old card, can now login. Would still like to use new card... — Hornankieli, Jan 05 '16 at 22:40
Which drivers did you use for your old card? It might be that you need to uninstall it. But be careful with that, as it might worsen the problem. — Mario Kamenjak, Jan 05 '16 at 22:48
Possible duplicate of Unity doesn't load, no Launcher, no Dash appears — David Foerster, Jan 05 '16 at 23:09
Ubuntu land! After a few weeks of having to focus on other stuff, I resorted to buying a new USB stick and reinstall Ubuntu from it. I installed the appropriate driver for my new graphics card, and everything seems to be running smoothly now. Thank you everyone for answering! Should this ask be marked as solved or not, since technically I only sidestepped the problem? — Hornankieli, Jan 28 '16 at 15:10

cl-netbox · Answer 1 · 2016-01-06T15:06:27.453

1

Generally you should use the drivers from the official Ubuntu repositories.
But install the latest official NVIDIA drivers 358 from the GPU Drivers PPA.
These drivers are known to work well with new NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 960.

Highlight the Ubuntu entry in the GRUB boot menu and press the E key.
Add nouveau.modeset=0 to the end of the linux line - press F10 to boot.

On login screen press Ctrl+Alt+F1 ... enter user name and password.

Then execute the following commands :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-358
sudo reboot

edited Jan 06 '16 at 15:06

answered Jan 06 '16 at 14:35

cl-netbox

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Thank you for answering! I got as far as update, but when I tried to install nvidia-358, it gives me the following message: "The following packages have unmet dependencies" and then it lists different linux-image-extra-generic and one linux-image-extra-generic to be dependent on other linux-images. It suggests to try apt-get -f install, but nothing happens when I try. – Hornankieli Jan 12 '16 at 13:07
@Hornankieli : Try to install the drivers from the Ubuntu repositories and dynamic kernel module support (in case it is not already installed) : sudo apt-get install dkms nvidia-352 - please repot back the results ! :) – cl-netbox Jan 12 '16 at 13:46
I tried, it gives me the same thing about the packages having unmet dependencies. – Hornankieli Jan 12 '16 at 14:05
@Hornankieli : This is very unusual - which kernel is installed ? Please provide the output from : uname -a :) – cl-netbox Jan 12 '16 at 14:28

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 05 '16 at 22:43

First item on the list will be to make sure you have space on both boot and root; Linux does react quite nasty when there is really no space left.

to do so open a terminal with CTRL + ALT + F1 and login

Now check space on your partitions with df -h and fix possible space issues. If the issue is on boot like mentioned with the guest account I always trow away one of the older kernels with:

sudo apt-get remove linux-image- TAB , which will you a list of all installed kernels. Just select one of the lower numbers and TAB until it is complete before ENTER

If you have enough space but still not able to login go to your userdir with cd ~ and do:

rm .Xauthority

and

rm .ICEAuthority

Hello, and thank you! I checked boot and root, root has used 93% of its space and boot 100%. I tried removing the oldest and second oldest kernel, but it won't let me, saying that there are packages that have unmet dependencies. It suggests I correct them with apt-get -f install. Nothing happens when I try. — Hornankieli, Jan 12 '16 at 13:10

Can't login after upgrading graphics card

2 Answers2