Ubuntu stuck at splash screen

[Donut417]

Shut down my computer last night. This morning it does not want to boot. Gets stuck at the Ubuntu splash screen. I am able to enter recovery mode so I think I can save it. 
 

Im running Ubuntu 18.04.3

Graphics llvmpipe(Lomb 9.0.1, 128 bits)

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 There is my build. I did install Vulkan. I believe some updates were just applied before this happen. Not sure if that’s related. Actually that’s why I shut down. To ensure the machine was rebooted. 
 

I did the suggestion of turning off the splash screen in the grub config. It seems it hangs at the part of Started User Manager for UID 121. Does say OK in the brackets to the left of that but goes no further. 

[Sauron]

You could chroot into it and manually revert the latest update, it kind of smells like a botched gpu driver update but it could be a lot of other things too. Take note of what packages you revert so it's easier to figure out what may have caused this.

[Husky]

Can you check the installed update history in recovery mode to check if any critical kernel or graphics updates were applied? If so you can revert them and see if that solves the issue.

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

You could chroot into it and manually revert the latest update, it kind of smells like a botched gpu driver update but it could be a lot of other things too. Take note of what packages you revert so it's easier to figure out what may have caused this.

How do I do that? Little bit out of my wheel house if you know what I mean. 

[IAmAndre]

Before anything just start the computer in CLI. If I remember well, you have to press CTRL + ALT + F1 or F2. That way, you will be able to see the actual log messages and see what's going on.

[Donut417]

6 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

Before anything just start the computer in CLI. If I remember well, you have to press CTRL + ALT + F1 or F2. That way, you will be able to see the actual log messages and see what's going on.

The only way I figured out how to get in to the cmd  line is thru the recovery manager. Once the PC gets to the Splash screen it’s frozen and won’t do anything. Like I said above when I turned off the splash screen it seems to get stuck at Started User Manager for UID 121. 

[IAmAndre]

7 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

The only way I figured out how to get in to the cmd  line is thru the recovery manager. Once the PC gets to the Splash screen it’s frozen and won’t do anything. Like I said above when I turned off the splash screen it seems to get stuck at Started User Manager for UID 121. 

OK then I would suggest reverting to the previous version of the drivers using the recovery mode as it's been mentioned before.

[Donut417]

Good news. I figured it out. 

 

I think it might have been a botched update. But when I booted to the recovery manager I was able to get to the terminal. From there I seen I had about 49 packages that needed updates. Decided to take a chance. That worked. I guess this is what you get when you use the LTS version with newer hardware.

[Sauron]

23 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

How do I do that? Little bit out of my wheel house if you know what I mean. 

Boot from the installation media, open a terminal and follow this guide https://bartsimons.me/ubuntu-linux-chroot-guide/ (the guide uses an Arch live environment but it shouldn't make a difference). Then, downgrade the packages you updated before your last shutdown.

 

I guess that's for future reference though, seems like you solved it

[Donut417]

6 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Boot from the installation media, open a terminal and follow this guide https://bartsimons.me/ubuntu-linux-chroot-guide/ (the guide uses an Arch live environment but it shouldn't make a difference). Then, downgrade the packages you updated before your last shutdown.

 

I guess that's for future reference though, seems like you solved it

On that note. I think the issue is I choose to use the LTS version of Ubutnu. The Radeon 5700 is a newer GPU and the kernel that LTS ships with does not support it. I had to upgrade my Kernel. So in a way, I cobbled it together to work. I was told that when it comes to newer hardware you want to use the latest releases. 

 

I think the next version of Ubuntu to be released is hapening in like April. Its going to have an updated Kernel from what I have seen and hopefully it will work a bit better. Though Ubuntu has worked better than Windows 10 ever did for me. 

[Sauron]

14 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

On that note. I think the issue is I choose to use the LTS version of Ubutnu. The Radeon 5700 is a newer GPU and the kernel that LTS ships with does not support it. I had to upgrade my Kernel. So in a way, I cobbled it together to work. I was told that when it comes to newer hardware you want to use the latest releases. 

 

I think the next version of Ubuntu to be released is hapening in like April. Its going to have an updated Kernel from what I have seen and hopefully it will work a bit better. Though Ubuntu has worked better than Windows 10 ever did for me. 

Yeah, old kernels don't play nice with new hardware and upgrading kernels on fixed release distros can be a bit of a crapshoot. Rolling release distributions don't have that problem.

[Dutch_Master]

Rolling release distro's have a whole bunch of other problems though...

 

That said, it's not overly difficult to roll in your own, newer kernel into any Linux distro. The easiest way is to build one from source and install that, but as you're going outside of the package manager, this cannot keep track of this kernel for you. So not recommended unless absolutely required. Building it as a package is a bit more involved but has the benefit that the aforementioned package manager can track it and apply updates if and when required and avialable.

 

Personally, when I was running Debian (old)Stable way back I had to build my own kernels as the various versions couldn't cooperate with the nVidia installer (kernel 2.4.something, that's telling! ) I even wrote a script for it, now long since outdated, to automate the build process.