nVidia driver update last night, black screen this morining

[PendragonUK]

Last night just before bed I auto update my system, something that has become a habit.

There was a couple of things, one being an nvidia update, there was one of those yesterday, that was a little odd. The update failed, I assumed that no changes to my system took place so I shut down my system and went to bed.

This morning the dreaded black screen. Either this is just me, or the forum is about the become flooded with support requests as every nVidia user runs into this issue…

[PendragonUK]

Just to increase my pain Alt+Ctrl+F1 is not getting me to the terminal so I can not purge the nvidia drivers… my system appear to have crashed hard.

[stevecook172001]

Can you boot up in recovery mode so that you land on a simple command line? I think it is one of the options in grub.

[lah7]

Either this is just me, or the forum is about the become flooded with support requests as every nVidia user runs into this issue…

I updated successfully yesterday (364.19, GTX 960) and everything is still working as it should.

You say the update failed, so I’d presume it uninstalled the old driver but failed to install the new one nor install nouveau (the open source driver) instead.

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As @stevecook172001 says , you should be able to get into recovery mode (by holding SHIFT) – you can drop to a root terminal there.

Try these commands to restore the open source driver:

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

[wolfman]

See the drivers install guide, as @stevecook172001 pointed out, you can install/remove drivers in recovery mode (a network cable connection is required!) :

How to install graphics card drivers in Ubuntu

ATTENTION ATI/AMD GRAPHICS CARD OWNERS, IF YOU INTEND TO USE UBUNTU (MATE) 16.04, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING FIRST!. EDIT: POSSIBLE SOLUTION FOR SOME WHO HAVE AN AMD CARD ON THE LIST HERE: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-GPU-PRO-Linux-Beta-Driver%E2%80%93Release-Notes.aspx See also: https://support.amd.com/en-us/download/linux First and foremost, Intel drivers are auto installed and there is no reason to start to try installing any drivers for Intel graphics…

[ouroumov]

Hi @lah7
I’m just asking out of curiosity : would that brick even tty1?
Cheers

[lah7]

Recovery mode doesn’t load up lightdm (the display manager), it’s all text based. I suspect lightdm has frozen the entire system or is stuck in an endless loop (by constantly switching back to tty7)

It might be possible to stop it normally if the system had SSH access (and was working):

sudo service lightdm stop

[lah7]

Uh oh… a new update appeared today, and it failed on mine too:

These packages were responsible:

libcuba1-364 364.19-0ubuntu0-gpu16.04.6
nvidia-opencl-icd-364 364.19-0ubuntu-0-gpu16.04.6

The reason was this:

there is no script in the new version of the package - giving up

I suspect this update hasn’t been packaged properly.

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We are not alone:

Installing nvidia-opencl-icd-367 breaks the package manager

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I managed to solve this situation by:

• Rebooting the computer
• Luckily for me, the open source driver was present, or because I tried re-installing in Software & Updates first…
• Mark the affected packages for complete removal in Synaptic.
• Install the 367 version of the driver and reboot.

[wolfman]

I’m running the 361 driver no problems to report here!. I did not use the Nvidia PPA!.

[Bill_MI]

I did not use the Nvidia PPA!.

Whoa! Is this whole issue about a PPA update? nVidia’s PPA? Also 361.42 here.

[wolfman]

Just to increase my pain Alt+Ctrl+F1 is not getting me to the terminal so I can not purge the nvidia drivers… my system appear to have crashed hard.

I just noticed this!, the buttons are Ctrl + Alt + t and not Alt+Ctrl+F1.

[ouroumov]

No @wolfman, he’s trying to get to tty1, not to a mate-terminal instance.
Cheers

[wolfman]

Just to increase my pain Alt+Ctrl+F1 is not getting me to the terminal so I can not purge the nvidia drivers… my system appear to have crashed hard.

Hi @ouroumov,

are you sure as that’s not what it says above?.

[ouroumov]

So I’m not sure how it is on a German keyboard layout.
Here in France if you hit CTRL+ATL+F1 you effectively drop out of the desktop environment and go to tty1, which is a text-only interface to your operating system.
It’s also a terminal, presenting a login prompt.
tty1 is the way to go when you have a crashed desktop (everything frozen) and you want to know whether your whole system crashed too. (Machine death, can’t ping it, etc)
The GUI part of the OS usually runs on tty7 and you can go back to it using CTRL+ALT+F7

[wolfman]

Hi,

I thought he wanted a normal terminal, if that is the case; he should do:

Ctrl + Alt + F2

and don’t use tty1 but use tty2!.

Then log in with your username and password then type the following supplied by @lah7 above :

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-* && sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau && 
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

To install the normal Nvidia drivers:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-361

Restart PC with:

sudo reboot

[Bulletdust]

I had the same issue. I updated to the latest drivers using the Ubuntu PPA (something I’ve been doing for quite some time with no issues whatsoever), upon installing I rebooted the PC to find a blank screen. No matter how much I tried to purge the drivers and reinstall in terminal I just could not get the drivers to reinstall correctly.

These files were the issue:

libcuba1-364 364.19-0ubuntu0-gpu16.04.6
nvidia-opencl-icd-364 364.19-0ubuntu-0-gpu16.04.6

In the end it was easier to blow the install away and start again. I’m avoiding updating to the latest drivers for the time being.

[BennyLeeB1]

Need help! Nothing works… Can’t boot. Stuck in tty1.

[BennyLeeB1]

Everything works fine now Thanks a lot!