Ubuntu 18.04 stuck in boot after starting Gnome Display Manager on Intel Graphics

I ran into a problem this week, where I couldn't find a solution to.

Everytime I start Ubuntu, it boots nominally, until it reaches "starting Gnome Display Manager" where the Konsole gets stuck and the screen is going black every few seconds.

I also cannot access any tty by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F1, F2

I found an older question, where they solved the problem by reinstalling a new Nvidia Graphics driver.

I can't try that, because I can't access a shell, and my Ubuntu runs fully on Intel Graphics. (Lenovo Ultrabook)

Can I still use my Ubuntu, or do I have to wipe the partition?

Solution 1:

I had the same problem after installating 18.10 on my Thinkpad T430s where Nvidia drivers were installed. Doing a

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*

inside the recovery mode root shell solved the problem for me.

Solution 2:

got same kind of gdm3 not responding (no greeter) after an upgrade to 18.04, from 17.10, on a i386 machine (namely, a very old MacBook) with Intel graphics.

I still could access it by SSH, but no longer by ctrl+alt+F1 or whatever, no more local access.

What should work considering what has been working for me is to disable GDM3 and to switch to whatever else doing the same thing, either Lightdm or Xdm

You can still access the recovery mode (hold shift key at boot) and get into a shell terminal I think. It was the case for me.

I did

sudo apt-get install xdm

and finally chose to switch to lightdm.

But actually

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

should display the same menu, providing Lightdm has been installed before, and you may be able to select it.