[SOLVED] Starting version 219 problem

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hi all, I’ve been running Ubuntu Mate 15.04 for months now with no problems at all (at least none that I haven’t been able to solve) however I did an update yesterday and my laptop now boots to the black ‘starting system 219’ screen.

I have read a lot of posts on the issue but as I’m still somewhere in the steep Linux learning curve I can’t seem to be able to fix it from within grub…

Could anyone help me out?

Many Thanks, Matt

Ps I’ve tried booting to grub and typing the command ‘sudo systemctl enable sddm.service -f’ as suggested by many online but grub doesn’t seem to understand the command.

How to fix black screen on start up
#2

Have never had this before, but hope I can help.
I could be wrong, but I think Ubuntu Mate uses LightDM (not on Mate at the moment).
Run this to see what display manager you are using:
cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager

I see on askubuntu that someone else had the same issue, and
it turned out to be an error with some fstab entries due to an external
drive that was no longer connected. He had to comment those drives out
of fstab and his system booted. Could this perhaps be the issue?

Hope I was of some help.
Regards, Rolf.

#3

I know a computer that “hangs” on the “starting version ###”. It turns out the boot process is waiting for a start job to finish, and times out after 3 minutes.

When you next boot your computer, hold SHIFT to reveal GRUB and press ‘e’ to edit the boot entry for Ubuntu MATE. Find ‘quiet’ and ‘splash’ and delete them, then press F10 to boot. (This only applies to that boot, this doesn’t modify them permanently)

The kernel will boot as normal but it will be very verbose. You’ll be able to pinpoint and identify what’s holding up the boot process.

#4

Thanks for the replies guys…

Running ‘sudo cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager’ returns ‘/usr/sbin/lightdm’ but i’m not sure if using lightdm is the problem or how to change it to an alternative

I have tried removing ‘quiet’ and ‘splash’ from within the GRUB edit menu but then when i try to boot the system crashes.

I can still boot up MATE if i go into the bootloader and choose the earlier installation so its just the newest version that is causing problems

Any more advice out there?

#5

You have probably read this, but …

This bug report seems to sum it all up (and marked fix release?).

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1432171

Have you tried switching back to upstart?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemdForUpstartUsers#Switching_init_systems

#6

Hi v3xx, yes i did try those things but to no avail however i have now fixed it so i thought i would post how in case anyone has a similar problem…

The problem appears to have been during the upgrade so i went into my bootloader (‘f12’ during boot but for some it might be ‘shift’). went into advanced options and booted an earlier version. Then just went back through the sudo apt-get update && upgrade process. Rebooted and everything is fine now.

Hope this helps someone out in the future and thanks for the responses, this community is ace :sunny:

Matt

#7

Good show Matt :smile:

Consider adding your fix to the bug report, it may help others.

#8

Good point @anon42388993 i’ll do it now

#9

This maybe too late but in case of anyone facing the same problem.

Opning the current kernal version in recovery mode from the advanced menu, enable networking then update dpkg fixed the problem for me.