Mint 17 KDE black screen and mouse pointer

[tonycstech]

I did look for a solution and found one on gnome.
Solution was to reinstall gnome via command accessed by CTRL+ALT+F1.
How ever, i have KDE so that just made things worse.

I dont understand 2 things.
#1 How does the topic gets marked as "Solved" when person had no access to internet so he could not execute the command, thus not able to reinstall gnome ?
#2 Now that its solved, i cant get anyone to reply because well, its solved right ? So who reads solved topics unless they have a problem.

Actually #3 also does exist.
That is: Is this common ?
I didnt install anything that would make it behave like that.
I downloaded KDE because front page said "STABLE POLISHED" etc, but only after couple of boots its not working.

So please let me ask you this. Is it the desktop shell problem or something else ?
And
What do i do to fix it. I dont want to reinstall everything.


Thanks in advance.

Thankfully i have dual boot on same hard drive so i can at least post this.

Please, if you have the solution, do not reply with solution that would require internet connection (if possible)

Again, thank you in advance.

[anandrkris]

It is possible that there are some graphic driver related issues. Could you provide more details of your system?
Please boot into system using Live DVD or USB that you used to install and provide the output of the below command

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inxi -Fx

You can also try this from blackscreen, press CTRL + Alt + F1, login using your credentials and type the below command to see if logs into UI...

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startx

[tonycstech]

startx says:
nothing. screen went black, mouse pointer is gone.
then i did the ctrl alt f1 again and saw:
XvScreenInit: screen devprivates ptr non-NULL init
or something like that

[anandrkris]

Did you type startx after logging in ctrl + alt + F1 terminal mode?

[tonycstech]

That was the 1st thing it prompted me with. Could not type anything else without logging in first.
Strange question.

[tonycstech]

inxi -fx says
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-3635QM CPU (-HT-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB bmips: 19155.3
Clock Speeds: 1: 1400.00 MHz 2: 1200.00 MHz 3: 1200.00 MHz 4: 1200.00 MHz 5: 1200.00 MHz 6: 1200.00 MHz 7: 1200.00 MHz 8: 1200.00 MHz
CPU Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts
acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good
nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid
sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm
tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms

What is causing this, driver or KDE shell ?
If driver, why isnt it reverting to default automatically ?

[acerimusdux]

Did you use "apt-get purge" to uninstall gnome or anything else you just installed? If it made things worse, I think that might be a good idea to start with.

And it appears the previous thread was closed because it was over a year old; it's best to start your own thread with your own problem, which you've done now, but most people reading this won't have seen your previous post:

Re: [Solved] Boot to black screen with Mouse Pointer.

by tonycstech on Tue Oct 14, 2014 6:40 am
My screen says: (after pressing ctrl alt f7)
Restoring resolver state [OK]

after pressing ctrl alt f1 i tried to login
Loged in and did the sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
but i have KDE so it didnt really help.
Does that mean that shell is broken (if shell reinstall is the solution) ?
How do i reinstall KDE ?


I picked KDE because main page said "polished". I thought it meant "working" but i was wrong once again.

So I would do first:

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sudo apt-get purge gnome-shell 
sudo apt-get autoremove

since that was clearly the wrong solution for restoring a KDE system.

Next, you could reinstall KDE, but lets check first what's wrong with it. If the problem is in your user configuration, a reinstall might not help, as that would be preserved. First try killing the X session entirely with:

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sudo pkill Xorg

If that gets you a new graphical login, you could try logging in as a different user. If you don't have a different user, create one using adduser. The command, in my example creating a user named "guest" is simply:

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sudo adduser guest

If things work fine for the newly created user, but are still broken when you sign in as the old user, then you know the problem is in the user configuration. Possibly you have "save session on exit", and it has saved and is trying to load a session that has gone wrong.

Also try this command, so we can see what is actually running in your KDE session:

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ps fuxww

If you are able to login successfuly as a new user, do it for both so we can compare the differences. If even killing Xorg doesn't get you a new login, just run it from the terminal on Ctl-Alt-F1. In that case, you may have trouble copying it to post for us, but you could send the output to a file using "ps fuxww > file" and maybe copy the file to a thumb drive if you have one, to read it from another machine?

In any case, what you want to look for there is whatever is running under the KDE-session tree, as you should see all your KDE-session stuff there (probably KDE panel, a window manager, file manager, etc).

Also, if you are able to get a graphical login, pay attention to the options available for choosing your session at login. There's an icon there you can check, after choosing your user, and before entering your password, which gives you the chance to choose different sessions available. You should also be able to see what they are on the system by:

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ls /usr/share/xsessions

That should tell us if there are any xsessions other than KDE available on your system. So long as you have a mouse pointer, it's probably not a graphics hardware issue, as that means the X server seems to be running. So I think it's probably a problem with the xsession that is running. So you might try another session if there are any.

[tonycstech]

When i did the gnome install, i removed it with some removal command.
I then ran kde-full install but that did not help.
What is the command to revert to original graphics driver ?
I want to try that first before i go into terminal guru nerd, i am a windows nerd, thats enough for me

If going back to default driver wont fix the problem, then its the shell problem. Gotta eliminate one after another start with what i know.
What is xsession, is it a KDE shell thing or OS thing ?
Thanks !

[acerimusdux]

When i did the gnome install, i removed it with some removal command.
I then ran kde-full install but that did not help.
What is the command to revert to original graphics driver ?
I want to try that first before i go into terminal guru nerd, i am a windows nerd, thats enough for me

If going back to default driver wont fix the problem, then its the shell problem. Gotta eliminate one after another start with what i know.
What is xsession, is it a KDE shell thing or OS thing ?
Thanks !

All Linux graphics run on top of something called the X windows system. All the different desktops, KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, whatever, all of them run on this same system that handles the underlying graphics. The xsession is the program that starts all the things any particular one of these needs, and manages how these things interact, so they hopefully don't get in each others way. So typically this program starts a window manager (that handles moving and resizing windows, and window decorations), a file manager, a panel, etc.

In your case, you have a mouse pointer, so there's likely nothing wrong with your graphics.

If you go to the console and do:

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xterm -display :0&
firefox --display :0&

I would bet you Ctl-Alt-F1 back to that screen and you will see a terminal and browser there running (if those programs are installed on your system). They may not even have windows around them that you can move or resize (depending on if a window manager is running). But if that works, X is running and the graphics are fine.

[tonycstech]

After i accidentally formatted by usb stick that had bootloader installed, i used https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair to fix it. Awesome prog. Simple and make total sense for windows user.


Anyway back to the problem.
I ran 2 of your commands and got this (see picture that was very hard to attach it being less then 1mb)

IMG_20141015_182048_164.jpg

[acerimusdux]

Well that last part "Resource temporarily unavailable on X server :0" tells us the xserver isn't fucntioning after all, so maybe the issue is the graphics driver. I asssume you've tried a reboot as well? Or the "sudo pkill Xorg" command I mentioned earlier?

Try this:

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inxi -G

Maybe you already know this, but that's just to see what your graphics hardware is and what driver is installed.

And then, try rebooting, and then checking the logs after boot:

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cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log|grep "(EE)\|(WW)"
cat ~/.xsession-errors

In the first, don't worry about anything about fonts, but there might be something interesting about your graphics card, especially any EE lines. In the second, there tends to be a lot of warnings anyway, but maybe doing it right after boot will give us something useful. Since you can't easily post it, just give it a look, there's probably lots unimportant like library errors (Gtk and libgrade), and "not found when attempting to remove it", ignore all that. But if something really stands out as possibly graphics related or related to it failing or stopping, let us know.

[tonycstech]

Here is what i have.
At the bottom it talks gnome. i dont know why, i had it uninstalled using different command as well as yours. Your gnome uninstall command did not work, it said no such package exist, so i assume my command (that i found online) worked to a point of making your command unable to identify still installed gnome.

IMG_20141015_220813_404.jpg

[acerimusdux]

It's not finding your graphics drivers.

When you asked about reverting to the original driver, do you mean that you installed an ATI proprietary driver? Is this a slightly older graphics card that may no longer be supported by the latest ATI driver?

I'm not sure which driver you had originally. But it seems to be looking for and not finding the Fglrx driver. I'm not sure whether you should try to install that or purge it. Are the ATI and radeon drivers already installed?

It really depends on your card, some newer cards will be better with the newer proprietary drivers. But if it's a little older, you could try this:

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sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon
sudo apt-get purge fglrx fglrx-updates fglrx-amdcccle

Or to reinstall the ATI drivers and software:

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sudo apt-get purge fglrx fglrx-updates fglrx-amdcccle
sudo apt-get install fglrx fglrx-updates fglrx-amdcccle

[tonycstech]

Doesn't work. I purged them and install individually but still black screen and a pointer

[acerimusdux]

Doesn't work. I purged them and install individually but still black screen and a pointer

Well run

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 inxi -G 

At least figure out what driver should work with your system, and install thatone, then check if there's a different error.

[tonycstech]

Says fglrx,intel
Typing pkill Xorg takes me to login selection screen where I can pick username and session. Gnome is not there anymore, I listed installed packages and figured I needed to remove gnome-session package.
I am a newb windows nerd and this is impossible hard for me.
Should I just give up and reinstall?

[acerimusdux]

Says fglrx,intel

The fglrx is only for AMD graphics. Which intel?

Typing pkill Xorg takes me to login selection screen where I can pick username and session.

See above where I suggested "If that gets you a new graphical login, you could try logging in as a different user" to see if the default configuration works.

I listed installed packages and figured I needed to remove gnome-session package.

sudo apt-get purge gnome-session
sudo apt-get autoremove

Not really sure why gnome couldn't exist alongside KDE either, though.

Should I just give up and reinstall?

Maybe, but what happens when you login? You still have KDE as an option to log in? You are able to get a login screen now, so is it crashing after you log in?

[tonycstech]

Guest login has same issue

[acerimusdux]

Guest login has same issue

Yeah, then might as well reinstall.

[tonycstech]

So what is the problem, driver or the KDE or linux its self ?
I want to know so i can change one or another.