18.04 on Virtualbox boots into tty1, unable to reinstall desktop or install other desktop

Jackiie

1/26/24, 9:59 AM

Running Virtualbox 7.0.4 with Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS, kernel 5.3.0-26 (school project, may not be upgraded from 18.04). It shows purple screen for a few seconds before booting into terminal.

I've tried following others solutions, sudo apt-get udpate && sudo apt-get upgrade gives me 0 changes. Done sudo apt-get autoremove and sudo apt-get clean.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop gives me Package ubuntu-desktop is not available, but is reterred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missine, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another sOUrCE E: Package *ubuntu-desktop' has no installation candidate

What would my next step be, apart from fully reinstalling Ubuntu?

Edit 26/1 11.18: Trying sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop gives me a long list of "Depends: xxx but it is not installable" and "Depends: is not going to be installed", and also "Recommends: xxx but is not going to be installed/is not installable" followed by "Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages".

Edit 26/1 13.55: @nobody gave me a link to restore default repos in /etc/apt/sources.list. While I still can't install ubuntu-desktop, I finally managed to install xubuntu-desktop. After that I just recovered some files I wanted and recovered from a snapshot. While my main problem didn't get a solution, this is "good enough" for now. I have a snapshot before recovering and would love to test more solutions.

0 + 6

virtualbox

desktop-environments

18.04

guiverc

1/26/24, 10:06 AM

Your details somewhat clash; Ubuntu 18.04.3 used the 5.0 kernel, with 5.3 only appearing with 18.04.4 (*though for a few weeks prior to 18.04.4 release a 18.04.3 system did run with 5.3, as the version change from .3 to .4 occurs when all upgrades have occurred; https://fridge.ubuntu.com/2020/02/12/ubuntu-18-04-4-lts-released/ shows the ISO release date, but installed systems upgraded before then & it's a few weeks before that for 18.04.3 to have 5.3 kernel*). I'd suggest running `sudo apt update` & read the messages; are they all there? are there any warnings? errors? as your system is dated

Jackiie

1/26/24, 10:09 AM

@guiverc `sudo apt update` gives "Hit:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic InRelease Hit:2 htto://archive.camonical.com/ubuntu bionic Infelease Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information.. . Done All packages are up to date"

nobody

1/26/24, 10:57 AM

Does this answer your question? [Restore default apt repositories in sources.list from command line](https://askubuntu.com/questions/586595/restore-default-apt-repositories-in-sources-list-from-command-line)

Jackiie

1/26/24, 11:22 AM

@nobody I think it may have helped one step, as it now finds ubuntu-desktop. I get "2 not upgraded" with `update` and `upgrade`. Still get: "ubuntu-desktop :Depends: gdm3 but it is not goine to be installed Same with gnome-control-center, gnome-settines-daemon, gnome-shell, nautilus, ubuntu-session Recommends: enome-initial-setup but it is not going to be installed, same with nautilus-share. Also broken packages.

Jackiie

1/26/24, 11:33 AM

@nobody It did let me install xubuntu now, and boot into it. That's one step forward. If this is all I need I'll update my question later, but I'm still going to try and get ubuntu working.

karel

1/27/24, 10:54 AM

Does this answer your question? [How do I restore the default repositories?](https://askubuntu.com/questions/124017/how-do-i-restore-the-default-repositories)

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: 18.04 on Virtualbox boots into tty1, unable to reinstall desktop or install other desktop

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.