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I have a custom-built workstation (from early 2018) with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. It's connected to one screen and a few USB devices.

It came with Ubuntu 16.04 preinstalled. The kernel I'm using is 4.15.0-66-generic. If I remember correctly I was using NVIDIA driver version 390 before; I've updated it to 440.26 since this problem started.

The setup was working fine until I recently updated to Ubuntu 18.04, and now it just hangs every time I boot. After the splash screen (ubuntu with 5 dots), it gets stuck with a bunch of log text (all "OK") blinking, with the last line:

 [ OK ] Started GNOME Display Manager.aemon.ring daemon.rnel crash signatures.

(the part after "Display Manager" seems to be some garbled text from previous lines.)

The boot gets stuck with this screen blinking

What I've tried:

  • Purging and reinstalling the NVIDIA driver. I did apt-get remove --purge nvidia-* then add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa and apt-get update, ubuntu-drivers autoinstall. What I have now, nvidia-440, is the recommended version for my GPU according to ubuntu-drivers devices.
  • Purging and reinstalling xorg-* xserver-xorg.
  • Enabling DRM mode setting. I added nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in my /etc/default/grub and did update-grub. I've also tried nomodeset, to no avail.
  • Using lightdm instead of gdm3, with dpkg-reconfigure lightdm. When I reboot after this, the boot doesn't hang and I can reach the login screen, but then I get stuck in a login loop; permission settings of .Xauthority were fine, so I don't know what's wrong. (xdm gave me the same problem)
  • Checking /etc/X11/xorg.conf. I initially didn't have one; creating one with nvidia-xconfig made no difference.
  • Selecting a previous kernel 4.15.0-65-generic.

I still cannot boot or log in successfully.

My problem appears to be similar to gdm3 display manager hangs after booting with Ubuntu 18.10; however, I cannot disable my NVIDIA GPU because I need to use it for work (also, unlike that post lightdm doesn't work for me, as stated above). I also need the GUI for work.

This machine is indispensable to my work and I really need to fix this problem as soon as possible, but I am still quite inexperienced with Ubuntu and am at a loss what to do. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

tnmln
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1 Answers1

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Try the following (This was the solution for me):

  1. Disable Secure boot (BIOS setting)

  2. In the GRUB menu, select the first Ubuntu option (don't press enter)

  3. Press e

  4. Find the line that starts with linux and after quiet splash add: modprobe.blacklist=nouveau

  5. Press F10 to start.

If this solves the problem, you can make the change permanent by editing /etc/default/grub:

In a terminal run sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Then add the following line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash modprobe.blacklist=nouveau"

Ctrl+o to save and Ctrl+x to exit nano

Then run sudo update-grub

Solution adapted from: https://gist.github.com/mari-linhares/cef4cb3440408e44963d1447a7db5ae0

Nmath
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Martin Danailov Golemanski
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  • Thanks for the proposed solution. Unfortunately this didn't work for me -- I still get stuck with the same screen, although there are some minor differences (the screen is not blinking, and there is no garbled text on the last line after "Started GNOME Display Manager.") – tnmln Oct 30 '19 at 07:58
  • Keep in mind i did that without nvidia drivers installed. I used: sudo apt-get purge nvidia-* to remove them. Try it and let us know. – Martin Danailov Golemanski Oct 30 '19 at 17:48
  • Yes, I rebooted after blacklisting nouveau in my grub file and updating grub, and after having purged nvidia-*, without installing any nvidia drivers. I still get the same "GNOME" screen... – tnmln Oct 31 '19 at 06:43