Ubuntu help

[AlanAlan]

so I recently installed Ubuntu and I was trying out so tweaks and I go my computer into the tty1 black login screen. After that I went and searched for answer online and the command was startx and it booted me back into the desktop of Ubuntu and everything is unusable. it is just the desktop and I cant do anything . 

can anyone help?

[Sauron]

Did you reboot?

 

It's not a good idea to tinker with X if you don't know what you're doing.

 

btw @AlanAlan please follow your topics

[AlanAlan]

Did you reboot?

 

It's not a good idea to tinker with X if you don't know what you're doing.

 

btw @AlanAlan please follow your topics

I know I messed up.

Do you know a fix to this?

What do you mean by following my topics?

[Sauron]

I know I messed up.

Do you know a fix to this?

What do you mean by following my topics?

 

again, did you try rebooting?

 

in the top right there's a "follow this topic" button, use it. that way you'll receive notifications when someone answers even if he doesn't quote or mention you.

[Azgoth 2]

How did you get to the TTY screen?  ALT+CTRL+F1 (or some other F key)?  If that's the case, Ubuntu runs its X session in TTY7, so try CTRL+ALT+F7.  If you ended your X session through something like sudo pkill x or the CTRL+ALT+Backspace command, then startx should be all you need.  Not sure why it wouldn't be responding.  Try rebooting and see if that fixes it.

[Nena Trinity]

How did you get to the TTY screen? ALT+CTRL+F1 (or some other F key)? If that's the case, Ubuntu runs its X session in TTY7, so try CTRL+ALT+F7. If you ended your X session through something like sudo pkill x or the CTRL+ALT+Backspace command, then startx should be all you need. Not sure why it wouldn't be responding. Try rebooting and see if that fixes it.

On mine pressing f7 combo leads to A small blinking line in the upper left corner...

[AlanAlan]

again, did you try rebooting?

 

in the top right there's a "follow this topic" button, use it. that way you'll receive notifications when someone answers even if he doesn't quote or mention you.

Yes I rebooted and I got back to the tty screen

[Sauron]

Yes I rebooted and I got back to the tty screen

 

At this point you should probably just do a clean install if you don't have any sensitive data. If you do, you can try reverting whatever update you made.

 

Find which exact packages you installed with this command

less /var/log/apt/history.log

which will show the latest update log, then use

sudo apt-get install <package-name>=<package-version-number>

to install the previous version of thepackages you updated.

 

This is one of the reasons you should update via command line if at all possible, if something goes wrong at least you'll know exactly what you changed.

[AlanAlan]

At this point you should probably just do a clean install if you don't have any sensitive data. If you do, you can try reverting whatever update you made.

 

Find which exact packages you installed with this command

less /var/log/apt/history.log

which will show the latest update log, then use

sudo apt-get install <package-name>=<package-version-number>

to install the previous version of thepackages you updated.

 

This is one of the reasons you should update via command line if at all possible, if something goes wrong at least you'll know exactly what you changed.

Do you know a fix that does not involve erasing data and fresh install of Ubuntu? I have some data I want to recover. 

[Sauron]

Do you know a fix that does not involve erasing data and fresh install of Ubuntu? I have some data I want to recover. 

 

As I said, whatever it was you did your best bet is to try to do it in reverse. I can't really give you any more tips unless I know exactly what you did. Uninstall/revert anything you installed/updated and change any configuration files you may have edited to their default. You'll need to do this from the command line.

 

Maybe there's one other thing you can try - uninstall the package "lightdm" and reinstall it. Lightdm is the program that handles the login gui and starts X before you enter your account. If you accidentally messed with the configuration reinstalling it may solve your problem.

[AlanAlan]

As I said, whatever it was you did your best bet is to try to do it in reverse. I can't really give you any more tips unless I know exactly what you did. Uninstall/revert anything you installed/updated and change any configuration files you may have edited to their default. You'll need to do this from the command line.

 

Maybe there's one other thing you can try - uninstall the package "lightdm" and reinstall it. Lightdm is the program that handles the login gui and starts X before you enter your account. If you accidentally messed with the configuration reinstalling it may solve your problem.

So I installed gnome desktop environment and after I rebooted the computer it gave me this screen

[Opask]

So I installed gnome desktop environment and after I rebooted the computer it gave me this screen

What screen? You haven't linked anything. If its the tty terminal log in and do what Sauron said. Uninstall and reinstall the display manager not the desktop environment. Stock ubuntu uses "lightdm" but ubuntu gnome might use "gdm".

[Sauron]

So I installed gnome desktop environment and after I rebooted the computer it gave me this screen

 

I think you forgot to link the image

 

What screen? You haven't linked anything. If its the tty terminal log in and do what Sauron said. Uninstall and reinstall the display manager not the desktop environment. Stock ubuntu uses "lightdm" but ubuntu gnome might use "gdm".

 

I am not convinced gdm comes with the gnome package, or at least it may not be enabled by default.

[Opask]

I think you forgot to link the image

 

 

I am not convinced gdm comes with the gnome package, or at least it may not be enabled by default.

It might if ubuntu was installed with the ubuntu-gnome.iso. But even then I'm not sure myself. I think it still uses lightdm. Definitely wouldn't be enabled if you installed gnome on a normal ubuntu install. You would have to enable it(ubuntu isn't using systemd so I don't even remember how to do this) and change the .Xinitrc file.