Ubuntu

Ubuntu 14.04 start up problems

Asked by davidzaq1

Hello,

I have Ubuntu 14.04. The system has been doing pretty good for a while but developed a problem

Last night, I needed to download the photos from my camera to my computer. I put the micro sd card from the phone into an adapter and uploaded the photos to the computer....no issues.

I ejected the adapter and shut down the computer but then forgot something and turned the computer back on.
When the computer came back on, I could only see three files I had saved to the desktop but there was no unity, no side files and nothing else like the clock symbol etc. Even the terminal would not launch.

I have turned the computer off and on 10 times since then and it will not come back to where it was.

Today, I opened the guest log in and I have the desktop, all the functions and the unity and the terminal opens.

Do you have any idea how to get the unity back and get the terminal working again on the regular side of the computer?

I tried opening the terminal in the guest side but the terminal only says guest so, I do not know if any commands I put in that terminal will only be for the guest portion of the computer or if it can fix what ever is wrong.

I am not sure if this is a graphic card issue or not.

As a note, I can use the guest side of Ubuntu which gives me the Unity Desktop and all the icons as well as the terminal.

I tried a command on the user side of Ubuntu, ( the side with no unity desktop),

I used Cntrl + Alt + F1 to get to the terminal and logged in,

Typed: cconf reset -f /org/compiz/

Then: setsid unity

Then unity --reset-icons

But none of this did any good and still cannot get to the unity desktop.

I can still get to the Internet using the guest access but it would be nice to get to my regular desktop as i cannot access any files, or folders etc through the guest session.

Also, the only thing I can do on the user side of the desktop is to right click on the mouse.
The only real option available is to change desktop background image. If I do that, I can get to settings.

I thought the problem might be graphics related so I looked at the additional graphics drivers. The only one being used right now is the xorg driver. I tried to switch to the Nvidia 304 driver and the system asked for the password.
It started to make the change but then stopped and would not allow me to change the driver.

I tried several times to do this but I cannot make the change.

Hope you can help,

Thank you

I hope you can help with this.

Thank you.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

If you boot an older kernel is it OK?

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davidzaq1 (david3a9x) said : 		#2

I do not know how to boot an older kernel.

I can only access a guest session and a terminal with guest written on it
I am not sure if running a command in the guest terminal will even make any changes to the administrator side.

But back to your question, I do not know how to boot to an older kernel....Now that I think of it, this might have
caused to problem as it happened after an update.

Thank you for your help.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Hold SHIFT at boot then use cursors and ENTER to select an older kernel.

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davidzaq1 (david3a9x) said : 		#4

I just did that and tried this with two different kernels. Neither one solved the problem.

When I hold the shift key and get to the grub menu, at the top of the screen it says

" Grub version is 2.02 beta 2 Subuntu.12

I scrolled down to a kernel version......I think version ending in .34 recovery mode. and rebooted but did not do anything.
                                                                     did the same again with .36 recovery mode...and rebooted. same thing happened.

Neither one of them fixed the desktop. I can only log into the guest session and get to the unity desktop there.

I also tried sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
the output to that was, " XOG_RUNTIME_DIR Not set in the environment".

I also tried /etc/default/grub
Output was "permission denied".

In the admin screen, I could do cntrl+Alt+F1 and got to the terminal.
I tried sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get upgrade and did sudo do-release-upgrade.
The out put from the final command 3was, "no new releases found"

I don't know how it cannot find new releases but it is ok. I figured if I could upgrade, it might fix the problem.

Well I hope you can help me fix this problem.

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davidzaq1 (david3a9x) said : 		#5

Do not need this answered, thank you

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#6

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.