Updating to the newest drivers crashes cinnamon

[Caldor]

Well, I'm back on my normal Mint after 2 days of black screens with a mouse pointer.
What I did was:

1. On that black screen hit Ctrl-alt-F1 to get a command prompt.
2. Login as root
3. Remove Nvidia drvers in use by apt-get remove --purge nvidia* (thanks to the poster that brought up that command!)
4. Reboot
5. Mint boots up and shows GUI in software rendering mode
6. Go to Driver Manager and pick a graphic driver
7. Reboot

Repeat steps 1-7 until you find a driver that works. In my case the recommended driver (marked as recommended in Driver Manager) is 340.98 and seems to work for now.

[primolarry]

Thanks a lot Cosmo, it worked!

[jim-m]

My Scenario:
Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa 64 bit, Cinnamon 2.8.8, Kernel 3.19.0-32-generic, AMD Phenom II X3 710
8 Gb Ram, NVIDIA C77 [GE Force 8200], dual monitors.

4th Nov 2016
Applied updates via Update Manager as normal, including an update to the Nvidia graphics driver nvidia-304.

Result:
Continued to use the system OK until next reboot / log out.
System booted OK,
Sign-in screen present and correct,
Cinnamon failed to start after sign-in: black screens, mouse pointer, system hangs.

Investigation:
(to cut a long story short)

Press ctrl-alt-F2 to drop back to command line login prompt and log in as a supervisor.

Check the logs in /var/log for errors. This is what turned up in my system:

Code: Select all

tail /var/log/nvidia-prime-upstart.log 
Sorry but your hardware configuration is not supported

Conclusion:
Well, I guess Nvidia have blown it.

Resolution:
Unhappily the nvidia-304 driver (as set up in Driver Manager) is the only driver that worked for my set-up (all the others croak in some way or other quite quickly). I can't afford to not fix this problem, so I had to work out how to revert to the previous version of the nvidia-304 driver, (you can check the “before” and “after” version ids in Update Manager, menu view - history of updates, but of course if cinnamon isn't running then that's no help).

This is the process that I eventually worked out after much Googling on a different device:

Whilst at the command prompt, uninstall the miscreant driver:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

This assumes that you aren't running any other Nvidia drivers! It worked for me. The purge option both removes the driver configuration and removes the driver, in one step.

It's probably also advisable to run the following to get rid of dependent packages that are no longer needed (in theory this is safe and again it worked for me):

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get autoremove

Now look in the repository cache to see what package versions are available for nvidia-304 – normally there will be at least the current and previous versions:

Code: Select all

apt-cache showpkg nvidia-304
...
Provides: 
304.132-0ubuntu0.14.04.2 - xorg-driver-video xorg-driver-binary nvidia-driver-binary 
304.131-0ubuntu0.14.04.2 - xorg-driver-video xorg-driver-binary nvidia-driver-binary 
304.117-0ubuntu1 - xorg-driver-video xorg-driver-binary nvidia-driver-binary

Version 132 is the latest, so I need to reinstall the earlier version 131, as follows:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install nvidia-304=304.131-0ubuntu0.14.04.2

(notice that the version number begins with 304, and the package name ends with 304, so be sure to type the 304 twice with the “=” in the middle)

Now configure the kernel to recognise the new driver:

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-304

Now flag the driver as “please don't offer any more updates for this one” to Update Manager:

Code: Select all

sudo echo “nvidia-304 hold” | sudo dpkg --set-selections

If you don't do this then next time Update Manager runs it will repeat it's last trick and crash your system again.

All that remains is to reboot:

Code: Select all

sudo reboot

All I can say is “it worked for me”.

[Prsman]

Like others I have this problem with Cinnamon crashing. I tried to go back to the old driver and failed.Tried a lot of things and nothing worked.
Your instructions seems to be the best. I am running 18 Cinnamon and when I run : apt-cache showpkg nvidia-304, I get 304.131-0unbuntu3.
This is what shows in update manager as well for the old driver. I am surprised in update manager there is no revert function.
Would make all this simple.

[chunkyg]

I just went through this today with 17.2, black screen, cursor, after the nvidia driver update. Lucky for me, I also have the Mate desktop installed, so I was able log in to Mate and do a complete removal of the 304 and the 304 open GL packages with the Synaptic Package Manager. I then when to var/cache/apt/archives , found the 2 older 304 deb packages, right-clicked them, and used the deb installer and then rebooted to Cinnamon. All is well! I have now set the update manager to ignore nvidia updates. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The amount of updates lately is mind-boggling!

[Graemevj]

Thanks jim-m and chunkyg,

Although update manager identified 304.131 as the previous driver, apt-cache showpkg nvidia-304 did not display this, only 304.132 and 304.117 which left me unable to install it until chunkyg pointed out that the cache would have the .deb package and thus everything installed from there. I also used update manager to ignore nvidia updates. This is the second time I have been burned with nvidia - a slow learner

[MrPistachio]

Oh Boy!!! I feel fortunate that I am able to post on here. The last couple of days has been fatiguing when trying to correct this Nvidia driver crash problem. First off I'm no guru by any means and place a lot of trust in other folks on the forum for direction. More to the point ..... I'm hoping the masters of Mint creation will provide a new driver that will work soon. I had been using Nvidia 304.132 when the system went into Fallback mode. I've switched to X server Ver. 1:1.0.10 -1 and it is what I'm using presently but it will crash when I try to configure Slimjet. I have had to abandon Slimjet and use Firefox which is much slower. Nvidia 304.132 is terrible it immediately puts me back to fallback mode. In either driver right click menu is blacked out. Yesterday I was put in the position of doing a clean full reinstall. I've been using Mint for 3 1/2 years and this is the first real problem for me. My reason to post is to be counted as another user who is having the problem.


HP Pavilion AMD Athlon 64z2 dual core, 2048 mb memory, Nvidia gforce 6150 SE Graaphics card

[marlenejo]

I like the Chunkyg solution which is much easier to do, not even require the use of the terminal (of course if you still have access to a display). In my case, cinnamon crash but revert to another usable graphical mode (?). The only drawback so far is that the drivers manager still show that 304.132 is in used which is false. I agree the manager should have had another selection to revert to the previous version in an update so "dangerous".

Btw I am glad that I had a partition snapshot (Macrium Reflect). If everything else fail, you can easily revert back. Hopefully, the backup is not too old.

[growlebear1]

Following jim-m's procedures was the solution I was searching for.
All I can say is "it worked for me, too!"

[RichardM1]

I had the same thing in my mint 17 cinnamon. Changed to mint 18 mate, and it worked. 32 bit version.

I have Dell Inspiron 531. One of the last Windows XP computers. Now a dual boot. nvidia card. I also have a nvidia network driver though, and I need it to get to the web. The video driver number was the same number as the original post.

Logged in and got the black screen.
Plugged in a USB drive. It did an automatic mount.
Then did the Ctrl-Alt-F1 get the terminal prompt.
Copied all the home folder files I needed to the USB Drive. Only the ones not hidden. Don't need all those system files. the dot hidden folders, but only the profile folders, for me .thunderbird and .mozilla.
cp -R (folder-name) /media/(username) (tab key will bring up the usb drive)
need the -R to copy folders.
sudo halt
to unmount the drive. Don't know how to mount and unmount in terminal. Supposed to shut down the computer, but the power light and fans were still on. Had to do a crash power off.
Installed linux mint 18 mate. Used the other option and formatted the linux mint 17 partition, wiped out.
Didn't use my software selection. Don't think you an switch to from cinnamon to mate with that. So uninstalled what software I don't use.
Ran the update manager. Ran about 2 hours. Looked like hundreds of updates.
Installed the software I use.
It defaulted to the nouveau driver. Got the LM graphic when booting. But it eventually locked the screen and computer. Could boot up again and it would work a while but did it again.
Risked switching to the nvidia driver. It only had the version number from the original post. The version works with mate. It goes back to the terminal looking letters on boot up like the cinnamon did.

[Marcel_T]

First off, I want to tell you folks how I managed to get here. Did the update and got the black screen and mouse pointer. After trials and tribulations I pulled out an old office machine with on-board Intel graphics and wired it up to boot from my hard drive, plugged in my USB hardware modem and here I am.
The info here looks great, but I have a couple of questions before I try anything. I don't want to screw this up.
When plugged into the office machine's motherboard, Mint (17.3 Cinnamon) says there are no proprietary drivers being used and greys out the options. I checked via terminal and found way more than I can understand. I have an nVidia motherboard and wonder if some of that stuff applies to it. I'm not a terminal whizz, so my first question is, can I use the purge command to only remove the offending driver and what is the syntax?
The second question is related to the fact that my hard drive is running in a different computer. Would that affect the removal of the driver in some way?

[toonladder]

After the last nvidia update I was also left with a black screen and a mouse pointer. I use XFCE not Cinnamon.
I could still change to a terminal with ctl-alt-F1 and log in. There I noticed that the display manager mdm was
running but did not have any child processes. So I stopped mdm and tried good old startx:

Code: Select all

> sudo service mdm stop
> startx

Lo and behold, I was back in my desktop environment! Nothing wrong with the nvidia driver, but in my
case mdm could not start other processes properly. After checking various error logs and a lot of
googling I found the problem to be with upstart failing because of faulty permissions and owner of
directory ~/.cache/upstart/: drw------- (600) root:root. So I did:

Code: Select all

> sudo chown user:user ~/.cache/upstart/
> sudo chmod 700 ~/.cache/upstart/

and after reboot all was back to normal.
Although the symptoms I experienced after the last update were similar to the other reports here (black screen
and mouse pointer) the real problem in my case was very different.

[sproutkraut]

First off, I'm on Mint 13 still. I've never had problems, so I haven't felt the need to update.

Going off of jim-m's tutorial, I got to apt-cache showpkg nvidia-304 and there were no old packages to speak of, and there weren't any in var/cache/apt/archives either. I finally found the driver I needed http://launchpadlibrarian.net/226738478 ... _amd64.deb, installed it smoothly, but still no Cinnamon. Do I need to go back even further, or am I missing something?

[Atypical User]

Everyone, just in case: See Cinnamon crashes after updating Nvidia driver to 367.57 in its entirety for additional very important info. Clem has updated some support software to accommodate the changes in the latest Nvidia drivers affecting Cinnamon, and there may be other bugs introduced by the Nvidia updates, affecting some Ubuntu users as well.

Do I need to go back even further, or am I missing something?

Check your Xorg.0.log in your log file viewer for X server errors.

I used cerien's advice to clean up some trouble possibly caused by the latest Nvidia driver update by running sudo dpkg-reconfigure mdm (you'll need your password).* For some unknown reason -- even though I was using an Intel video driver at the time -- that update broke the X server, which broke Cinnamon.

can I use the purge command to only remove the offending driver and what is the syntax? [...] The second question is related to the fact that my hard drive is running in a different computer. Would that affect the removal of the driver in some way?

You can use the command to remove the driver. There are a couple of syntax examples given by others already (see Cant get gui on after trying to install epson scanner), like sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia* or sudo apt-get purge nvidia* to remove ALL Nvidia drivers. I used the Software Manager to uninstall the Nvidia driver.

But I don't think you should do it on the office machine. You can try booting that hard drive back in the original PC and then use the terminal via ctrl-alt-6 (you can try ctrl-alt-1 through ctrl-alt-7) to log in and run the command to uninstall the driver. This will default to the nouveau driver for an Nvidia-based PC, and you should be able to install other drivers. There are some related forum threads that might help.

Edits: removed extra "not".

*Also, Pjotr has researched sudo dpkg-reconfigure mdm and reported his results (the command has no impact, despite it reporting fixes) in the thread Problem with 367.57 nvidia driver [solved]. jackcq has observed the same.

[LexingtonMineral]

Same thing happened to me around Nov.8.I put in the installation and was able to see the hard drive under devices.
Then I was able to access everything on the hard drive when I got the root permission and extracted my pictures and other
items that I wanted to save,then I reinstalled 17 Cinnamon.Everything works fine now.

[LexingtonMineral]

I have Linux Mint 17,32bit.Cinnamon
The way that I was able to get to my hard drive was to put in the installation software,
went to computer and under devices was my hard drive.Then I clicked on the hard drive,clicked on the magnified glass at the top,typed in terminal.
Scroll down to terminal program,click on it.The terminal should pop up,then type in gksudo nemo,put in password.
You will see a red bar on top with Elevated Privileges with your files.I just extracted what I wanted to save,then reinstalled
Linux Mint 17.You will need flash drives with 64gb,32gb or several to extract everything that you may want.
Hope this helps and go luck!!

[robertsp]

Yes, it works for me too! Thanks for posting this.

I wish I'd seen this post before I'd gone through the move to Linux Mint 18 from 17, only to find that the problem existed on both distros. Oh well, you live and learn.

[I Love My Cat]

Well, I've tried logging in by pressing control-alt-f1, control-alt-f2, and control-alt-f6 and all I ever get is log in incorrect.

Apparently, I don't know my name or my password or both. I think my name is just the name of my computer; what else could it be? I've tried putting in the name it occasionally asks for and then the password, putting in root and then the password, and i've tried putting in ~ and then the password but no dice.

Perhaps I don't know how to log in as root. How do I do that?

Postscript: Nevermind, I got past that problem by not using my numberpad, but rather the numbers above qwerty. I have not yet solved my problem but that's because I'm a wimp and too chicken to proceed. Oh well, I'll be happy about getting this far and then I'll go back to screwing more things up . . .

[Marcel_T]

@ I Love My Cat,
I'm assuming you, like I, did the update and re-booted to a black screen. Yeah, drove me nuts. I didn't know how to get to a terminal either. If my assumption is correct, you need to remove your nvidia drivers. In the terminal type;
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
It will ask you for your password again. When you enter it again you'll see a bunch of gobbledygook and press Y to continue. After it's done type;
sudo reboot
Your computer should boot up using the default driver. What you do next depends on your hardware and version of Mint. Everybody's aware of the problem, and I just discovered that the latest recommended driver in the Driver Manager is now working for me. If it doesn't work for you remember;
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

[I Love My Cat]

My Scenario:
Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa 64 bit, Cinnamon 2.8.8, Kernel 3.19.0-32-generic, AMD Phenom II X3 710
8 Gb Ram, NVIDIA C77 [GE Force 8200], dual monitors.

4th Nov 2016
Applied updates via Update Manager as normal, including an update to the Nvidia graphics driver nvidia-304.

Result:
Continued to use the system OK until next reboot / log out.
System booted OK,
Sign-in screen present and correct,
Cinnamon failed to start after sign-in: black screens, mouse pointer, system hangs.

Investigation:
(to cut a long story short)

Press ctrl-alt-F2 to drop back to command line login prompt and log in as a supervisor.

Check the logs in /var/log for errors. This is what turned up in my system:

Code: Select all

tail /var/log/nvidia-prime-upstart.log 
Sorry but your hardware configuration is not supported

Conclusion:
Well, I guess Nvidia have blown it.

Resolution:
Unhappily the nvidia-304 driver (as set up in Driver Manager) is the only driver that worked for my set-up (all the others croak in some way or other quite quickly). I can't afford to not fix this problem, so I had to work out how to revert to the previous version of the nvidia-304 driver, (you can check the “before” and “after” version ids in Update Manager, menu view - history of updates, but of course if cinnamon isn't running then that's no help).

This is the process that I eventually worked out after much Googling on a different device:

Whilst at the command prompt, uninstall the miscreant driver:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

This assumes that you aren't running any other Nvidia drivers! It worked for me. The purge option both removes the driver configuration and removes the driver, in one step.

It's probably also advisable to run the following to get rid of dependent packages that are no longer needed (in theory this is safe and again it worked for me):

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get autoremove

Now look in the repository cache to see what package versions are available for nvidia-304 – normally there will be at least the current and previous versions:

Code: Select all

apt-cache showpkg nvidia-304
...
Provides: 
304.132-0ubuntu0.14.04.2 - xorg-driver-video xorg-driver-binary nvidia-driver-binary 
304.131-0ubuntu0.14.04.2 - xorg-driver-video xorg-driver-binary nvidia-driver-binary 
304.117-0ubuntu1 - xorg-driver-video xorg-driver-binary nvidia-driver-binary

Version 132 is the latest, so I need to reinstall the earlier version 131, as follows:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install nvidia-304=304.131-0ubuntu0.14.04.2

(notice that the version number begins with 304, and the package name ends with 304, so be sure to type the 304 twice with the “=” in the middle)

Now configure the kernel to recognise the new driver:

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-304

Now flag the driver as “please don't offer any more updates for this one” to Update Manager:

Code: Select all

sudo echo “nvidia-304 hold” | sudo dpkg --set-selections

If you don't do this then next time Update Manager runs it will repeat it's last trick and crash your system again.

All that remains is to reboot:

Code: Select all

sudo reboot

All I can say is “it worked for me”.

OK, well, it worked! Thank you so much jim-m.

I wish I had been braver sooner and didn't procrastinate so much. The only minor hitches were using the number keypad instead of the numbers above the qwerty row and a couple of misspellings along the way on my part. Other than that, it worked exactly according to plan.