[Tfug] OS Puzzle

[Jeffry Johnston]

Hi,

Was just upgrading an outdated system from 7.04, to 7.10, to 8.04, using
aptitude.  I didn't reboot during the process until the end.  When it came
up after the reboot, I had your tan screen with a mouse pointer.  I switched
to a terminal, (Ctrl-Alt-F1), and ran "sudo aptitude", then pressed g (to
apply changes), noticing that several pakcages were only partially upgraded
(I remember bash and hal, in particular).  Anyhow, this time everything was
able to complete the install.  So, I did "sudo reboot" and this time it
booted to the desktop.

Your underlying cause of failure might be quite different from mine..
however where you're at suggests that X did load, so you should be able to
run X apps, like synaptic (set up your DISPLAY environment variable, usually
"export DISPLAY=:0.0").  I don't know if there is a way to search for broken
packages via command line (I think I got lucky because I was using aptitude
to do the dist-upgrade), but I know synaptic can do it.  You might also
check whether gdm is running "pgrep gdm", or trying restarting it "sudo
/etc/init.d/gdm restart"

Good luck,
Jeff

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 8:53 AM, <arizray at comcast.net> wrote:

> "Halt" as in the screen proceeds to the blank tan screen with a cursor
> pointer in the middle. No further activity. ctrl+alt+f1 does not work or any
> other key stroke. I guess it would be fair to say that the system freezes.
> The rest of the code is not being executed after this point.
>
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Jeremy D Rogers" <jdrogers at optics.arizona.edu>
> > On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 8:56 PM, <arizray at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > > As a bit of history several people helped me to try and solve what I
> > > perceived as a problem with the gnome desktop. Basically during boot
> the
> > > system halts right after login. I pc is a gateway P4 2.8ghz, 1.5gb
> memory,
> > > 80gb HDD machine. I was successfully using the machine until recently.
> > >
> > > After much troubleshooting I decided to swap the "bad" harddrive into
> my
> > > other machine and it worked perfectly. Had the Ubuntu (ver. 8.10)
> progress
> > > bar present during boot etc. Placing it the original machine still had
> the
> > > fault of course but I now know that the S/W on the drive is ok. T then
> tried
> > > to T/S further by removing the 2 memory cards, one at a time to see if
> one
> > > of the modules might be bad and no improvement or solution was found so
> I
> > > have to assume that the memory is o.k.
> > >
> > > The video card is part of the mother board and I don't know how to test
> it
> > > as it does display.
> > >
> > > I would like anyone's ideas.
> > >
> >
> >
> > When you say it 'halts' do you mean it freezes, or it shuts down? If it
> > freezes, what does it look like? Does the screen go blank, or just stay
> as
> > it was, is there a delay, etc?
> > When it boots, instead of loging into gnome, can you switch to a virt
> > terminal (ctl+alt+F1) and login. See if it has the same behavior. Maybe
> you
> > can narrow it down some in such a way.
> > JDR
> >
> >
> > >
> > > THANKS
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
> > > Subscription Options:
> > > http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
> > >
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Jeremy D Rogers" <jdrogers at optics.arizona.edu>
> To: "Tucson Free Unix Group" <tfug at tfug.org>
> Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2008 02:47:44 +0000
> Subject: Re: [Tfug] OS Puzzle
>
> On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 8:56 PM, <arizray at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> As a bit of history several people helped me to try and solve what I
>> perceived as a problem with the gnome desktop. Basically during boot the
>> system halts right after login. I pc is a gateway P4 2.8ghz, 1.5gb memory,
>> 80gb HDD machine. I was successfully using the machine until recently.
>>
>> After much troubleshooting I decided to swap the "bad" harddrive into my
>> other machine and it worked perfectly. Had the Ubuntu (ver. 8.10) progress
>> bar present during boot etc. Placing it the original machine still had the
>> fault of course but I now know that the S/W on the drive is ok. T then tried
>> to T/S further by removing the 2 memory cards, one at a time to see if one
>> of the modules might be bad and no improvement or solution was found so I
>> have to assume that the memory is o.k.
>>
>> The video card is part of the mother board and I don't know how to test it
>> as it does display.
>>
>> I would like anyone's ideas.
>>
>
>
> When you say it 'halts' do you mean it freezes, or it shuts down? If it
> freezes, what does it look like? Does the screen go blank, or just stay as
> it was, is there a delay, etc?
> When it boots, instead of loging into gnome, can you switch to a virt
> terminal (ctl+alt+F1) and login. See if it has the same behavior. Maybe you
> can narrow it down some in such a way.
> JDR
>
>
>>
>> THANKS
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
>> Subscription Options:
>> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
> Subscription Options:
> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
> Subscription Options:
> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>
>
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