Score:0

Ubuntu 20.04 hangs even if nomodeset?

au flag

I haven't been using my Ubuntu partition in like two weeks. Coming back to it I do as per usual a package upgrade which, if I remember correctly may have been included some new nvidia packages too. After rebooting, the system completely hangs after the new boot.

What I've already tried with no success:

  • Using nomodeset to verify driver issues. The system starts but after few seconds hangs again. It appears to be related to the graphic driver section since I can type, log into it and type commands inside the terminal (even if I see the same login page since I'm doing it by memory). Even changing the log level or using the tty2 console hangs right after.
  • Using the Ubuntu recovery mode. This hangs aswell after few seconds.
  • Running a fsdisk to check on filesystem corruption but no problems outlined.
  • Changing the init system from the GRUB menu (init=/bin/sh). This is the only way I can interact with the system but changing the init system I have quite some limitations. If I could only connect to internet I could try removing the nvidia packages and maybe reinstall ubuntu-desktop or whatever but I don't know how to start a new network from there.

If you need more info I'm glad to give it to you. I'd rather find a fix for this (which appears to be really stupid but still...) then reinstalling the OS.

Score:0
au flag

So, after digging a bit deeper it was as presumed a video driver issue. The latest nvidia driver installation (nvidia-driver-470) was corrupted and made the system hang during boot time. I still can't figure out how the nomodeset was making the video output freeze but anyway..

What I did was booting in "safe mode" adding init=/bin/sh and changing ro to rw to the GRUB script and then manually removing the corrupted drivers:

sudo apt-get remove --purge '^nvidia-.*'

Some say that the nvidia-common package has dependencies with ubuntu-desktop but this wasn't my case. Otherwise, before proceeding it is highly advisable to reinstall ubuntu-desktop.

After rebooting the nouveau driver should automatically take place. To be sure that nouveau will be load in boot, I forceed-load it by add it to /etc/modules and removed (comment out) the nvidia modules:

echo 'nouveau' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

Last, removing the Xorg config file aswell:

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

After rebooting I could use the GUI again and reinstall correctly the latest nvidia drivers from the Software & Updates window.

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