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I have been having problems with my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installation (dual boot with Windows 7). Whenever I install some update OR if the machine is stuck & I try to do a hard reboot, the OS never boots back and either shows the message :

could not write bytes : broken pipe

OR shows a black screen with a cursor on top left :

_

I don't think I have done really wrong with my Ubuntu ( a hard reboot shouldn't break a OS .. everyone does that); just now it happened after I just installed a new copy and rebooted after some steps (see edit).

I want to ask what are the causes of these errors as I want to find a permanent fix to this problem. Can someone suggest how I could diagnose the problem with my machine ?

Edit

One thing I would like to add to my question, since I am getting some responses and I need to give accurate description. I forgot to mention, that I tried to compile Android on my machine. That requires the following step (I didn't know it would effect the machine because of my lack of experience - but now I think I need to mention it) :

sudo apt-get install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential \
zip curl zlib1g-dev libc6-dev lib32ncurses5-dev ia32-libs \
x11proto-core-dev libx11-dev lib32readline5-dev lib32z-dev \
libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 tofrodos python-markdown \
libxml2-utils xsltproc

See here.

When I try to this, it removes a lot of packages related to xserver/xorg, because one these has a dependency; when I try to apt-get that dependency, it removes many packages. Could this be causing the problem ? Could someone please try running this ? (I don't have experience with these packages)

Jake
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  • Possible duplicate of http://askubuntu.com/questions/433938/cannot-write-bytes-broken-pipe. – Jos Jul 16 '14 at 08:46
  • @Jos It's not a duplicate. I am observing it under different circumstances. Please let me solve my problem. – Jake Jul 16 '14 at 08:48

2 Answers2

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The error is related to the X server. It seems that your configuration was corrupted by your installation of the Android SDK. Try the following installation command instead:

sudo apt-get install git-core gnupg flex bison gperf build-essential zip curl \
zlib1g-dev libc6-dev lib32ncurses5-dev lib32z1 x11proto-core-dev libx11-dev \
lib32readline-gplv2-dev lib32z-dev libgl1-mesa-dev g++-multilib mingw32 \
tofrodos python-markdown libxml2-utils xsltproc

Note: some issues remained after that, related to linking of /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libGL.so. Try using locate to libGL.so to find your local version of the library, and then creating a symbolic soft link with ln -s YOURLIB TARGETLIB.

noleti
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May the problem cause by nvidia, try by removing nvidia and reinstall with current updates.

Do the following in terminal,

$ sudo apt-get purge nvidia-* 
$ sudo apt-get update 
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates
A J
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  • I do have Nvidia graphics card. I didn't install anything specific for it yet in Ubuntu. Let me try to run these commands. – Jake Jul 16 '14 at 08:52
  • @Jake is my information helpful? if it is accept the answer, It will helpful others may have same problem. – A J Jul 16 '14 at 09:14
  • I am working on it.Its not solved yet.But your answer seems to be leading in the right direction. noleti is taking a look at the problem as well. – Jake Jul 16 '14 at 09:16
  • You can see the comments I put in his answer so far – Jake Jul 16 '14 at 09:16
  • @Jake ok keep working... – A J Jul 16 '14 at 09:17
  • For now I am accepting noleti's answer, but still your advice was helpful. Thanks for taking the time :) – Jake Jul 16 '14 at 09:44
  • @Jake it's ok... – A J Jul 16 '14 at 09:56
  • I did follow your suggestion regarding nvidia, but stil the graphics shows unknown. Do you think this answer is useful: http://askubuntu.com/a/85322/26672, the `mesa-utils` package gave me the xserver problem. Do you know any other way ? Thanks (Sorry not directly related to my question) – Jake Jul 16 '14 at 10:00
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/15771/discussion-between-a-j-and-jake). – A J Jul 16 '14 at 10:06