15.04 and Nvidia: login loop

Upgraded 14.10 to 15.04, desktop fails to load past login screen. I type in my password, hear a failure sound byte, back to login screen. Also can't boot off a 15.04 thumb drive created with another PC. Guest account does same thing. Tried removing all nvidia driver packages, tried messing with .Xauthority, tried using gdm instead of lightdm (failed even worse: no login screen at all). Tried reinstalling ubuntu-desktop. Get error code of ACPI PCC probe failed, starting 219 or something like that.

Currently running 15.04 off said thumb drive...on an another PC with AMD integrated graphics, no issues.

15.04 doesn't like Nvidia graphics cards. Please help!

Solution 1:

it's you from the future. Here's how I fixed it: I didn't! I re-downloaded the 15.04 image from the Ubuntu website and created a startup "disk" on a USB thumb drive. Today it worked, wehereas it didn't last night :( Perhaps Canonical fixed their image... So I booted from the thumb drive and removed my existing 15.04 and installed a fresh copy! Sure I lost all of my files (VirtualBox, all installed games, etc.) but now Linux works again. Let this be a lesson to you Dustin! Never try and upgrade an Ubuntu OS! Just backup all of your files and do a clean install... just like you used to have to do with Windows!

Solution 2:

I had the exact same problem. I'm not sure exactly why it happened, but it seems my kernel was not updated.

To solve that I used Ctrl+Alt+F1 to go to a text-based virtual console, logged on there, then ran:

sudo apt-get install linux-generic

Everything started working again.

Solution 3:

My fix for my laptop

Dell xps l502x, so it is Intel + Nvidia optimus graphic card.

Have a look at what you have

dkms status

You may get something like this

bbswitch, 0.7, 3.19.0-15-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-340, 340.76, 3.19.0-15-generic, x86_64: installed

Remove all Nvidia drivers, make Ubuntu back to “clean” state.

Have a look at this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/144871/remove-all-nvidia-files

Basically, you do:

sudo apt-get purge $(dpkg -l | awk '$2~/nvidia/ {print $2}')

This should remove all nvidia drivers and now you should be clean.

You may want to double check:

dkms status

Install Nvidia driver

Have a look at this: http://www.binarytides.com/install-nvidia-drivers-ubuntu-14-04/ (the command line part)

I tried to install nvidia-349, it didn’t work, then I remember previously I used nvidia-340. It seems important to remember what works for you. I do:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-340 #(you may want to try nvidia-346)

Look at this long guide

http://rajat-osgyan.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/how-to-install-bumblebee-on-ubuntu.html

On step 4, instead of

sudo echo ON > cat/proc/acpi/bbswitch 

I changed it to

sudo tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<ON

based on https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch

Sometimes after turn on bbswitch, reboot, when I do echo /proc/acpi/bbswitch, I still see it OFF. Make sure Nvidia is installed in the first place or reboot for couple of times. If it is OFF, follow the guide to next step.

Reboot

After the guide, reboot, see if you still have the login loop issue. If you still have issues ,then look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log

/var/log/Xorg.0.log

Look for the error messages, which are indicated by (EE). In my case, it says

Failed to load /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/libglx.so: libnvidia-tls.so.340.46: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I do a locate libglx.so, it seems the file is sitting in another locations. It is time to rebuild xorg.conf

Rebuild xorg.conf

Have a look at this guide: https://lkubuntu.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/quick-and-easy-way-to-fix-x11-issues/

This was my last step and I was able to boot to the GUI.

Solution 4:

I had exactly the same issue on Ubuntu 15.10. None of the solutions suggested here worked, nor did other tutorials. After several clean installs of the system I finally figure out what caused it.

DO NOT PUT nomodeset permanently in the boot parameters!

After a clean install I could not login without manually typing nomodeset in the grub boot options before booting. After the first login, however, I used to set it in the boot config file so that I won't have to type it every time. After one of the re-installs I forgot to do that and this time NVIDIA drivers installed without issue and I was able to login just fine.

Solution 5:

I couldn't install the package

sudo apt-get install linux-kernel-generic

but this solved the problem with the login-loop for me:

sudo apt-get install linux-generic

thx for the idea with the kernel