Ubuntu

Black screen at login & possible issues with xorg

Asked by mentallaxative

Hi everyone,

I am using Ubuntu 7.10 and I recently installed xfce to try it out. I fiddled with the resolution in Xfce, and then when I logged out the monitor was just black and there was no login screen. When I pressed a few random keys I got the little drum sound of gnome.

When I rebooted the computer, the screen flashed

starting anac(h)ronistic cron anacron
Starting deferred execution scheduler atd
Starting periodic command scheduler crond
Enabling additional executable binary formats (binfmt-support
Checking battery state...
Running local boot scripts (/etc/rc.local)

three times before going completely black.

Unfortunately I seem to have made the problem worse by trying to use sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, and now those couple of lines stay on the screen at the end. If I type stuff it appears on the screen but doesn't do anything at all when I press enter. I tried replacing xorg.conf with a backup made when I edited it with reconfigure but it doesn't appear to have changed anything.

When I try startx in recovery mode I also get this:

(WW) NVIDIA: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:1:0:0) found
(EE) Device(s) detected, but none match those in the config file.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

The graphics card is nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]

I found an old xorg.20.log when I first installed Ubuntu and this error is not present, so I'm assuming it's something new I've broken. It's either this or the resolution I've tampered with that's made the screen black. My old resolution was 1280x1024 60Hz. The old xorg.conf file has this as one of the resolutions so I'm very confused about what to do.

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mentallaxative
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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

You can try to change video resolution...
- first try to dynamically change screen resolution plese the press CTR + ALT + "+" and/or CTRL + ALT + "-"
- Try to restart the graphic layer press CTR + ALT + BACKSPACE

Reconfiguring your xserver-xorg may help you.

Please open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:

To make a backup copy of your actual /etc/X11/xorg.conf type:

cd /etc/X11
sudo cp xorg.conf xorg.conf.bak

give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Then try to reconfigure your xserver-xorg

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

answer to the simply questions, select multiple more than one screen resolutions when asked, then restart the pc.

If something goes wrong you can restore the saved copy of your old configuration, open a terminal or login to a virtual terminal by pressing ctrl+alt+F2 and type:

cd /etc/X11
sudo cp xorg.conf.bak xorg.conf

and restart the pc, type:

sudo reboot

Hope this helps

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mentallaxative (beshimi) said : 		#2

Ahhh, right, I finally fixed it by changing the device type from "nv" to "nVidia".