nvidia driver update

[siawacsh]

Hi guys, I am using Mint 17.2 updated. Today my update manager installed an nvidia driver update. On reboot I end up with a black screen. As shown in photo_1.

I then use ctrl + alt + backspace to get a log in screen and use it to restart the system.
At reboot I use advanced option as shown in photo_2
Then I select generic (recovery) as in photo_3
But the boot process seems to hang as in photo_4

I end up with a menu as in photo_5 which eventually bring me back to the black screen. I do not seem to be able to boot into the system using generic display driver in order to set it back to the previous driver.

Fortunately I have two hard drives and am able to boot in using another Mint 17.2. I can see the driver version should be set to 304.128

My questtion is how can I boot in the primary system in order to reset the nvidia driver?

I am able to see my primary HDD but do not know which file contains the nvidia driver.

I tried to attach the 220 Kb photos but the forum says that the photo is too large. So any ideas how to do this would also be appreciated.

This is rather urgent and would appreciate an early response.

Cheers
Siawacsh

[phd21]

Hi "siawacsh",

I just replied to your PM that you sent me.

A quick fix to a Nvidia video issue if your system is not coming up, or bad video performance, to get back to normal is below.

Get to a console terminal prompt, like you did (good job by the way), or by choosing the Advanced options during boot up and selecting "Recovery Mode", then from a console terminal prompt, type in:
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*

This obviously removes all the Nvidia drivers, then reboot, check the driver manager install the recommended video driver. If it happens again, repeat the process and do not install the Nvidia driver from the driver manager, and post that back here.

Are you using the Nvidia drivers from the Linux Mint repositories, or are you using a video driver PPA? Out of curiosity, why have you not upgraded to v17.3, or version 18?

Uploading a screenshot, image, or images to this forum
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=232332&hilit=verify+iso

Hope this helps ...

[siawacsh]

Hi Phil, as you probably have red from my last PM to you is that I have tried to purge the nvidia drivers. In fact I did not need to use sudo as the only option to get into a terminal was a root terminal. So I selected advanced then recovery mode. I took some time to detect either hardware or drivers thereof. Then I ended up with a menu with several options. One of them, and the only terminal option was "root terminal". The command purge rendered the following response.

Code: Select all

Not using locking for read only lock file. /var/lib/dpkg/lock
Unable to write to /var/cache/apt
The package lists or status file could not be passed or opened.

So now I am thinking the only other way is to access the nvidia config file. But I don't know how or if indeed this is a good idea. Failing that I have to back up my system then make the decision whether to install 17.3 or 18.

Regarding the recent changes I had made that might have messed with the system was a whole bunch code editing packages I had been experimenting with. Bluefish, Bracket and later Atom. None of which (with the exception of bluefish) could be found on the repositories. So if Mint 18 has Atom or at least a code editor which recognizes HTML5, CSS3 and PHP, then I would rather stick with the stability of 17.3 and wait until 18 is rock solid. Solid state disk optimization would also be an advantage. But I would still consider stability more important than extra bells & whistles.

In the meantime I Would appreciate any backup tips you might have. My cloud drive is the free option and probably have to upgrade it because I have at least 100 Gigs of data to backup. Are you still happy with the pCloud Client?

I would also like to study the best way to back up and restore thunderbird. It is all well and good copying and pasting the whole thunderbird folder but sometimes I want to compare two folders of the same name with different files or folders. For example, these last couple of days I did download some messages in my backup thunderbird? I hope you get what I mean.

Once again many thanks to you for your support.

Siawacsh

[phd21]

H "siawacsh",

You are most welcome.

Yes, I received your last PM. I replied to that with a fair amount of options regarding this.

Did you read and try the links that I gave you in that PM reply?

You might want to review these links below before giving up on the drive with the mal-functioning Linux Mint desktop.

If you are having problems with Mint18 Cinnamon and Nvidia drivers read this
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=232151#p1237285

Solve display problems in Ubuntu and Linux Mint (Great website)
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... ss:-setpci

black boot screen after installing video driver
https://mintguide.org/system/624-black- ... river.html

Older article - Nvidia optimus - BumbleBee drivers
https://mintguide.org/system/277-bumble ... ml#comment

If for some reason, you are getting a lock message from a console terminal prompt running any command, then restart (reboot) your computer and try again.

Regarding the recent changes I had made that might have messed with the system was a whole bunch code editing packages I had been experimenting with. Bluefish, Bracket and later Atom. None of which (with the exception of bluefish) could be found on the repositories. So if Mint 18 has Atom or at least a code editor which recognizes HTML5, CSS3 and PHP, then I would rather stick with the stability of 17.3 and wait until 18 is rock solid. Solid state disk optimization would also be an advantage. But I would still consider stability more important than extra bells & whistles.

I do not think that installing text or html editors would have any negative results on your video system or graphical desktop. The excellent "Atom" editor can be installed in any Linux Mint system, including versions 17.x or 18, from their website. If you only have an ancient 32-bit system, like me , then you would have to use a PPA to install the Atom editor.

Linux Mint versions 17.x are rock solid and extremely stable with long term support (LTS) until 2019. I have found that Linux Mint 18 to be very stable as well, but it is much different than Linux Mint 17.x which is based upon Ubuntu 14.04, whereas Linux Mint 18 is based upon Ubuntu 16.04. There are still a few applications, programs, features, that have not yet been upgraded to this new version, or have been removed (not available), that I really like and want to use. Yet, there are new applications and utilities, new features, and other applications that have been upgraded significantly for Linux Mint 18 (Ubuntu 16.04) that you simply cannot install in previous versions of Linux Mint. Unfortunately, this is a typical scenario when operating systems are significantly upgraded whether that is Linux, Linux Mint, MS Windows, or Mac.

The web link from the excellent website "Easy Linux Tips Project" has a lot of information regarding using and setting up SSD drives in various Linux Mint versions. One of the best ways to improve your computer system's performance is to get and use a SSD hard drive.

In the meantime I Would appreciate any backup tips you might have. My cloud drive is the free option and probably have to upgrade it because I have at least 100 Gigs of data to backup. Are you still happy with the pCloud Client?

I love the "pCloud" service and their superb Linux client with system tray management icon. It is a great way to have documents, and files and folders of stuff, that you want to remotely access, or securely share with others, have access to while traveling, or application data that you want to not duplicate, if you boot up to another operating system.

As for using an Internet cloud service for regularly backing up an entire operating system (drive or partition), or for that matter a large local database file(s), I do not think that is practical from a time perspective. If you have 100 gb (gigabytes) or more to backup, that can take a very long time to back up through an Internet method, cloud based or otherwise. There is also the security aspect to consider. Although these cloud services are secure, they are still more vulnerable to a hacker, or Internet problem, than your local backup hard drives would be that are only connected to your computer when you are backing up, and you have total control of your secure backups on drive(s) that you physically have, including being able to take them with you, if the SHTF (in case of emergencies- ice).

I recommend getting a large external USB hard drive, and or if your computer has an external Sata port, then maybe a Sata external hard drive, for backing up. It should be larger than the drive(s), and or hard drive partitions, that you want to backup. External TeraByte (tb) drives are relatively inexpensive nowadays. I would also recommend getting two of them, and alternating them when backing up, this way if you have a problem while backing up, power failure, hardware failure, etc... then you have the other one to rely on. Example: Use one backup drive for Mon., Wed., Fri., Sun., then the other for Tue., Thur, Sat., etc... Or one drive this week, the other drive the next week, and so on...

As for backing up software applications and procedures, that depends a lot on what you or your business does daily.

These are the backup procedures (methods) that I highly recommend to anyone:

1.) Use a hard drive imaging program, like the excellent free "Clonezilla Live" to make image backups of your hard drive(s) to a folder like "Backup-Images" on your external drives, when you first get a computer, after installing a new operating system, major updates, etc... I usually do this at least once a month, and before any major operating system update or upgrade, before any hard drive or partition changes (rare), or before installing something that could have "systemic" (system wide) effects. This can take a while to run, so I usually start these at night before going to bed, so when I get up, it is done. If you really run into a problem, you can just restore the drive, or that drive's partition, reboot, and you are backup and running. This can take an hour or more to run depending upon the amount it has to backup or restore.

2.) Use a "syncing" program like the fantastic "FreeFileSync" (FFS) to make daily or frequent backups of data (passwords, etc...), documents, emails, multi-media files (video, music, pictures), basically things that are new, updated, or that change daily to the same external backup drives, using different folders of course. And except for the first time you run a "syncing" application with a new backup drive, this process is usually completed very quickly as compared to backing up an entire drive, because you are only backing up the stuff that is new or has changed from the last time you backed up. There is another advantage to this method, and that is you can easily access your frequent backups using your file manager and other software programs, like documents, data, multi-media files, etc... whereas accessing specific data from a compressed drive's image backup is not so fast or easy to do. I also use USB flash drive sticks to make backups of my documents, passwords data, anything like that which I can fit onto the smaller backup USB flash drive sticks. With "FFS" you can create and save and then recall specific FFS profiles for specific tasks for specific drives and or flash drive sticks; for instance, I have FFS profiles for my "Blue-WD" USB backup drive, for My "Grey-USB" WD backup drive, "LittleBlue16gb" - flash drive stick, "Patriot-16gb" (great fast USB flash drive sticks), etc... You could create a FFS profile to sync your music (& or videos & pics) to your USB connected phones, mp3 - mp4 players, other portable devices, or USB flash drive sticks, etc...

Free File Sync - FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization tool providing highly optimized performance and usability without needless user interface complexity.
http://www.freefilesync.org/

Linux Mint 18 - easy to install Linux ".deb" files, just download and double click to install.
http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/package/ge ... eefilesync

To install FreeFileSync using the PPA method, open a console terminal, type in, or copy & paste, each line below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freefilesync/ffs
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install freefilesync

3.) There is an awesome application called "Aptik" that can backup your Linux Mint system's customizations, like all installed applications including their PPAs & your custom configurations, themes, icons, your home folder, etc... which makes restoring Linux Mint the way you had it, from a fresh installation of Linux Mint easy to do. It only takes about 16 minutes (or less) to do a clean fresh install of any edition and version of Linux Mint. But, what about all software and their custom settings, etc.. that takes a lot of time for most people to do? This is where "Atpik" comes in extremely handy. I will use "aptik" after installing Linux Mint and setting it up the way I want it, after installing a lot of new software applications, before any major updates, or upgrades, etc... I also create a specific folder on my backup drives for "Aptik" backups.

To install "Aptik", download their easy installer ".deb" file, and double click that, or install their PPA below by Opening a console terminal prompt and type in each line one by one, or copy & paste each line, below:

Aptik website - their "homepage" has links to download the 32-bit or 64-bit easy installer Aptik ".deb" file.
http://www.teejeetech.in/2014/01/introducing-aptik.html


sudo apt-add-repository ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install aptik

I would also like to study the best way to back up and restore thunderbird. It is all well and good copying and pasting the whole thunderbird folder but sometimes I want to compare two folders of the same name with different files or folders. For example, these last couple of days I did download some messages in my backup thunderbird? I hope you get what I mean.

I already replied to this in my PM to you, just copy your Thunderbird (TB) hidden folder ".thunderbird" that is in your "/Home" folder to another USB flash drive stick, DVD, another attached drive or hard drive partition. Thunderbird can also be setup to use a different folder than its cryptic default folder, like "/Documents/Thunderbird" which would make backing up much easier, since most people already backup their "/Documents" folder. If you did not use the same Thunderbird folder and its data files when you ran TB again, then you may have to export the new or missing emails, then import those into your main TB folder and files. This should be a rare occurrence and to be avoided. FreeFileSync could compare them from a file point of view, but not their file contents.

Hope this helps ...

[siawacsh]

thanks very much.I don't know why for some reason I missed this reply until now. Did you get my question regarding HPLIP? I always experienced problems installing this on a fresh system. And going by documents Mint 17.x is supposed to have HPLIP by default. Sure it recognizes and installs the driver. But the driver never works. So I get the key ring issue use this tutorial.

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... ll-models-

I sent that question via PM just few minutes ago?

Thanks
Siawacsh

[phd21]

Hi "siawacsh",

You are welcome...

I have been updating my last reply, so please re-read it.

Below is a link to install the HP Open Source drivers. click the button "Download HPLIP", save the file somewhere like your "/Downloads" folder, or create a new "hp-printer" folder in your "/home" folder, and save it there, and follow the instructions ...

HP Linux Imaging and Printing; Print, Scan and Fax Drivers for Linux
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/in ... index.html


FYI-1: I found that creating a folder (directory) for the HP drivers in my "/home" folder, ex: "/hplip-3.16.5" or maybe just "/hp-printer", and copying, or saving, the downloaded installation file, like "hplip-3.16.5.run", into that folder and running it from there worked cleaner & better. Lately, when I ran the HP install from my "/home" folder, it created a lot of HP printer stuff (extra files and folders) in my "/home" folder that I did not want there.

~/hplip-3.16.5 > sh hplip-3.16.5.run

FYI-2: if you have a problem running the HP installation script, make sure you have "dash" script program installed
from the Software Manager or Synaptic Package Manager (SPM).


Hope this helps...

[siawacsh]

Hi Phil, lets start with the nvidia solutions specified above. Link one does not apply since I am using 17.2. The second link take me to the menu option described earlier. Namely, that in the menu described option one "resume" takes me back to the black screen. Option four failsafeX does not exist. I am then left with logging in as root. At that point I try the command

apt-get purge nvidia*

and end up with the following errors

Code: Select all

Not using locking for read only lock file. /var/lib/dpkg/lock
Unable to write to /var/cache/apt
The package lists or status file could not be passed or opened

And as for the printer. I have also used this tutorial without much success. I am going to follow up on your suggestion and place the hlip script into a dedicated folder and see if it works any better.

As for for backing up. I just upgraded my pCloud account to 500 Gb. My network provider allows me a 200 Mb download speed and 20 Mb upload. When I place folders into the pCloud Sync I am amazed that it took a few minutes to upload 70 Gb of data. However, when I copy and paste .thunderbird on the pCloud drive but outside the Sync folder I find that 1.5 Gb of data took 15 minutes to upload. Would you know how that works.? My only complaint is that there is no obvious way to check whether all the contents now mirror local files. I know the 70 Gig folder shows exact same size and number of files. The uploaded thunderbird folder shows same file size as my local folder but with 197 files worryingly less.

Ideally once I get my system working properly I will want to place .thunderbird and .mozila and even chrome into the pCloud's Sync folder. But I have not figured out how to set my mail client to sync up with pClouds Sync drive. Overall I am very impressed with pCloud.

So if you have nothing to further to add about my nvidia issues, I will go ahead and install Mint 17.3. That is as soon as I have backed up everything. But I am not looking forward to installing the printer. It took several weeks of messing around with different tutorials. I know it was pjotr who found the solution. But I have searched my historic threads but cannot find it anymore. Perhaps I should PM him for it.

Thanks for everything
Siawacsh

[siawacsh]

please ignore what I said about uploading .thunderbird. I re did it and now the uploaded files is exactly the same number of files and the local file.

Siawacsh

[phd21]

Hi "siawacsh",

You are welcome again...

Honestly, if those links regarding Nvidia and display issues do not provide you with a solution, then I am out of suggestions regarding your Nvidia and your Linux Mint desktop issues. You can spend an inordinate amount of time on this problem, or you can backup (copy) all your important data files off of that non-working partition, and just restore, or re-install Linux Mint.

If you have an HP printer connected to the USB port, the instructions I gave you should work easily and well on any edition and version of Linux Mint. Once you have started the HP installation script, just hit enter on the questions for the "* defaults", except when asked for your system password, then enter that. If you have a problem, try another USB port. Do not use passive USB Hubs (4-port or 8-port USB hubs) that do not have their own power supply.

"pCloud" is a great cloud service provider, and their system tray panel icon has all the right stuff to manage the syncing of local folders and your cloud folder, including showing you its activity (what is being, or has been, synced). I too have been very impressed with "pCloud". Although you probably created a "pCloud" sync folder when installing their Linux client application, you can specify any folder as a synchronized folder, including something like "/Documents/Thunderbird", or just use their default sync folder. They have very good documentation as well.

Of course to get Thunderbird, or Firefox, etc... to use another folder to store their settings, like under a "pCloud" sync folder, requires changing their application's default settings. With Thunderbird, you can click the "local folder", "view settings for this account", change the local directory default folder, you can create a new folder wherever like "/Documents/Thunderbird_Local", click apply, then okay, it will ask you to restart. I had to create a separate folder for TB's "Local Folders". The same thing applies to any email account that you add to TB, after adding an email account, click that, "view settings for this account", click "server settings", change the default local directory folder to wherever you want, click apply, then okay, then restart Thunderbird. TB will restart after making each server change. So, if you have 2 email accounts, and you change the default local folder, then TB will restart 3 times, but this only happens when you first setup TB, from then on it works as normal.

Firefox is a little different, you can start Firefox with the "-p" profile option (firefox -p) to create another profile, where you can specify your own folder, and then use that profile as your default profile, then all settings will be placed in that folder.


Hope this helps ...

Thunderbird_CustomFolder_Local2.jpg

Thunderbird_CustomFolder_email2.jpg

[phd21]

Hi "siawacsh",

I was reviewing other posts on what appears to be a bad Nvidia video driver update, or something else, that stops the desktop from loading, and came across these two links that might be useful.

A brief set of optional things to try gleaned from the links below are:

1.) Try adding another user, and loggin out and logging in as that new user

Code: Select all

sudo adduser newusername

2.) Do an distribution upgrade

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Updates screwed up my system!
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=233306

Uninstalling Updates
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=232706

Good Luck ...

Hope this helps ...

[siawacsh]

Thanks so much for all your patience and help thus far. Unfortunately your last suggestions were all based on the assumption I can get to a terminal, which I cannot. All that I can do when I get to the black screen is to cancel, shutdown, restart or login.

I have backed my system up and in a few hours will install 17.3. Just hoping I wont have too much problem installing the printer drivers on the new system.

Once again, that you so much for every effort and patience.

Siawacsh

[phd21]

Hi "siawacsh",

You are very welcome.

I think installing a fresh copy of Linux Mint 17.3 is a good idea. But, If you boot to the "Recovery Mode" for Linux Mint, there is an option to access the root console terminal prompt, if you still want to try these other suggestions ...

I forgot to specify an easy way to install the superb "Atom" editor in any Linux Mint edition (32-bit or 64-bit). Works for Linux Mint 17.x and Linux Mint 18. So, here that is: FYI: "Webupd8" is another wonderful Linux website...

The "Atom" text, HTML, and programming editor installation and update PPA.
"the open source "hackable text editor for the 21st Century"
http://www.webupd8.org/2014/06/atom-tex ... linux.html
Launchpad web link for this PPA
https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/ubuntu/atom

To install this using the PPA method, open a console terminal, type in, or copy & paste, each line below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/atom
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install atom


If you encounter Node.js related bugs, install "nodejs" from the Software Manager or Synaptic Package Manager (SPM), or from the console terminal command prompt.
sudo apt-get install nodejs

Hope this helps ...

[siawacsh]

Thanks Philip. Your the best!

Siawacsh