When I configure gdm as my default display manager (dpkg-reconfigure gdm3
) and then reboot, I get a black screen with a blinking cursor. From there, I cannot do anything since the ttys does not work (ctrl+alt+F1 to F7). I could not figure out why.
In order to resolve this issue, I boot into safe mode, reconfigure lightdm and then reboot.
I observed that gdm could not start for some reason (hence the black screen).
$ systemctl status gdm.service
● gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
Nov 04 16:46:05 rigel systemd[1]: gdm.service: Unit cannot be reloaded because it is inactive.
When I manually start gdm systemctl status gdm.service
I am able to logout and log back in using gdm. After reboot, the black screen occurs again with the blinking cursor.
Any ideas? Thanks.
GNOME Shell 3.30.1
Ubuntu 18.10 cosmic
Kernel: x86_64 Linux 4.18.0-10-generic
NVIDIA driver 410.73 (GeForce GTX 970)
Best Answer
I had the same problem on both my Ubuntu 18.04 boxes after upgrade to 18.10. Both are configured with nvidia grahpics and to use the vanilla gnome session Ubuntu provides (not the Unity-ish version they munged together). Much faffing with nvidia drivers had no effect.
I did two other things - not sure which brought it back. From this answer Edit
/etc/gdm3/custom.conf
as asudo
and uncomment the line to force Xorg over WaylandI also installed
ubuntu-session
:But not sure whether that is really required so I suggest you try editing
/etc/gdm3/custom.conf
and rebooting first.hth