Linux Mint Forums

Hello,

I installed Linux Mint 13 KDE two months ago. All was working fine up until yesterday when I launched the automatic updates via the update manager. I rebooted the system after the update but all I would get back is a black screen. So I rebooted again, this time I get an option to start the system normally or in recovery mode. I also get two memory test options. I tried all option in recovery mode but to no avail. I end up with two errors that I can report:

1. If I play around with options in recovery mode. I get up to the part where it goes into starting different devices. I see a failure on line:
Starting load fallback graphics devices [fail]
After researching on it seems like it is a graphics card issue. For some reason after the update Mint no longer likes my graphics card. I saw two solutions for this issue:

• Uninstall lightdm (http://askubuntu.com/questions/142213/u ... cs-devices)

• Execute (http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=98759):
  sudo /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh # (if it exists)
  sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*
  sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon
  sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati
  sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
  sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Not sure if this would solve the problem as I was unable to try either of the above because I keep on getting an error when I try to execute apt-get commands in recovery mode as root (See issue 2)

2. If I try to run any sudo apt-get commands as root under recovery mode I get a following error:
W: not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock
E: Unable to write to /var/cache/opt
E: The package list or status file could not be parsed or open
After researching on this, it seems like something is locking the files. However, I have a feeling that since I am in recovery mode everything is in read only state.

I am not sure why an update would cause the screen not to work all of a sudden. The only option is to go in recovery mode but I cannot apply any of the solutions because I am stuck in read only mode for all files.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Please note that I am a newbie, I hope my description to the problems is clear.

For issue 2 I was able to get into read write mode by executing the command:
mount -o remount, rw /

However, I followed the instructions:

Execute (viewtopic.php?f=46&t=98759):
sudo /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh # (if it exists)
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*
sudo apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati
sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

the line sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati did not fully execute as some packages are missing. All other commands execute as expected. As of now still cannot boot into linux mint's GUI

I was able to get to the GUI by adding a parameter in the boot options. I added nomodeset in the boot options and GUI loaded up. The first time it loaded the screen looked a little strange (not too much). I then rebooted the machine and let the OS load up automatically, strangely the OS loaded up with no issues and the screen was back to normal.