If your boot process is halting in a black screen after briefly showing the Ubuntu splash, here is something you can try. Note that because this involves repairing broken packages, this tip will probably be useless to most of you, quite simply because Ubuntu rarely suffers from such mishaps.
Many of you would be used to Windows boot problems due to corrupted files, or incorrectly installed drivers and programs, but this is hardly ever an issue in Ubuntu. However, it can occasionally happen, possibly more related to corrupted files than incompletely-installed packages. Whatever the cause, it’s worth trying to see if you can repair any faulty packages that may be preventing you from getting to your desktop.
It might not work, but it shouldn’t do any harm, so when you get to the GRUB boot loader, choose the Recovery Mode option below the default entry. When you get to a command-line login prompt, simply type your username, hit Enter, then enter your password, and hit Enter.
You will get to the Recovery Menu, on which you choose the dpkg option “Repair broken packages“. Note that you will need to be connected to the internet for it to retrieve the packages it needs.
You’ll see a lot of text fly by as it fetches packages and installs them. When prompted to reboot your computer, do so, and hopefully you end up at your login screen or desktop!
Reoccurring? Read This:
If you find this worked, but then find you have to do it again shortly thereafter, I would seriously recommend you test your hardware for errors. I’ve seen many a Windows installation die from faulty RAM corrupting important files, and while Ubuntu generally just refuses to boot when the memory chips start dying (which is a good thing because it means your system should still be intact after replacing the faulty modules), it’s worth running memtest from the boot menu to be sure. I recommend running the memory check for at least 2 “passes” (series of tests) just to be certain, as chips can pass all tests once, even twice, but in the third pass should show errors (it might help if the computer has been on for a while, as the errors might only occur once the chips are warm).
Also, check out your hard-drive’s health via software you can download at the manufacturers site. If the drive is starting to write data incorrectly, and even corrupting system files when they’re accessed, you’re not doing yourself any favours hanging onto it. Best to get a new hard-drive and see if you can successfully image your old system over to it, or just start again.
Lastly, it could be the CPU that’s having intermittent errors and causing such mishaps, or the motherboard it’s attached to is slowly on it’s way out, so it may be time to upgrade both. At least these days that is relatively cheap, and means you end up with a faster system.
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Hello OzzyFrank. It is my first time posting a comment here
I am long time Unix developer and using Linux for past 4-5 years. I had been running Ubuntu 8.04 (and developing & testing RoR-baser software) on my dual-boot Dell Inspiron laptop since early. Ubuntu 8.04 was solid as a rock and I never encountered any of the problems that I have across since migrated 10.04. My experience with 10.4 has been bad enough that AFAIAC, 10.4 was a flop. I am seriously considering downgrading to 8.04.
Here is a sample of problems that I have encountered with 10.04. Based on what I have read on different Ubuntu discussion forms, others have encountered the same problems. So here we go:
1. Boot time for 10.4LTS is considerably longer than 8.04LTS on the dame exact HW (my laptop). This is minor thing & I can live with it.
2. Sometimes after booting 10.04 and getting the Ubuntu logo with the 5 progress dots going from white to red/pink, instead of getting the ‘login” page, I get a blank black page with a blinking cursor at the upper left corner. At this even the OS seems to be alive, there is zero user control, i.e. the only thing that can be done is to power down & up the laptop. FYI, to debug the problem, I have run the Ubuntu in recovery mode (by hitting the Esc key & interrupting the GRUB rebooting Ubuntu). During the debugging, i see failure msgs such as this:
…
ata14.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
…
3. During some reboots, I don’t even get as far as getting the Ubuntu Screen, I get an error msg (getting an error msg about a missing file /dev/…/…
4. Since upgrading to 10.4 I get occasional ‘screen flickering’ (i know this is not a boot problem). It seems this is fixed in 10.10.
I had NONE of the above random problems in more than two years of using 8.04.
Thanks for letting me to vent out.
Danesh
when i enter recovery mode i get commands screen with su access, it doesn’t show recovery menu, is there any way i can fix the broken packages from the command line?
thanks
Try sudo apt-get update -f.
ok – I made a fatal mistake… I wanted to install a simple program that required TK and TCL 8.5-dev – so I ran synaptic to install them – and it couldn’t find the packages. Being smarter than the average bear, I searched and found the .deb files and sudo apt-get them only to find a broken dependency in my libfontconfig1 which depended on fontconfig-config. Apparently, the repository I was looking at didn’t match what I wanted and synaptic burped a message that I had broken dependencies and should try apt-get update -f
So, I dutifully did just that and my entire system began a systematic removal of all my software to the point that nothing on the Ubuntu desktop works except the terminal window that’s currently open. I can’t open another term window – it doesn’t exist. Nothing exists in my menus… I killed it all…
How do I fix it? I have a number of disks and mount command works
OK, that certainly doesn’t sound too good, and I have to say is one of the strangest Ubuntu stories I’ve ever heard! First off, I have to ask are you sure all the programs were actually uninstalled, or is it that you just can access them via the menu? Also, I am not sure what you mean about “except the terminal window that’s currently open. I can’t open another term window” – first off, does a terminal window pop up by itself or do you invoke it? And I am assuming you have a launcher for the terminal on your desktop or something, which is how you’re trying to open another terminal window? If you are at the desktop and can access the commandline, which is what I gather you are saying, if for some reason you need to open another instance, the command gnome-terminal should do it. As I said, not exactly sure what you mean there, bit since you’re saying you do end up with a terminal, I’d even try starting programs you had installed via their commands, just to see if they really are uninstalled (eg: gedit for Text Editor, firefox %u for Firefox, etc).
Anyway, if you can access the commandline, then I would try the easiest quick-fix I can think of, and reinstall the ubuntu-desktop metapackage: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop. That should at least get the vital stuff back, and from there start getting your system back to normal. As I said, just make sure your programs really are uninstalled first.
Hello Genius!
How can enter to this, first of all i am running Ubuntu 11.10 64 bits edition, i was doing this
after a sudo apt-get upgrade I was told that some packages could be safely removed. I guess these were old kernels, so I did
sudo apt-get autoremove
then i saw just some packages, free like 150 megabytes and then i am not able to boot my ubuntu! ):
what can i do to see this?
Ok, sorry to hear that has happened – usually an autoremove is fine, but here and there stuff like this can happen. So have you tried the steps outlined in the article, as in choosing the recovery option at the GRUB bootloader menu? If you don’t even see GRUB, then hit your Esc key while booting and you should see it, and the recovery option beneath the usual boot option, which is what you need to choose. You should end up at the Recovery Menu, but if not, you can try to repair packages from the command prompt (make sure you’re connected to the web):
sudo apt-get update -f
Hopefully that works!
I’m dual booting W7 and Ubuntu (installed from Wubi). I’ve had it up and running a few times but today ,i have pressed power button multiple times while booting up and I’m getting a message from Windows Boot Manager when I select Ubuntu that wubildr.mbr is missing or corrupt. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
i have installed on G drive and the .mbr file got corrupted.I thought of uninstalling it.But now G drive itself is is not opening.Lots of other data is also in G drive.Kindly help me in fixing this issue.am getting the below error when trying to open G drive.
G drive is not accessible because of an I/O device error.
How to proceed further.Because of this,windows boot up process is taking more time than usual
Hi, without more info, I can only speculate. When you mention “I/O device error”, it makes me think it could actually be a failing drive (on the subject of hard drives dying, I always tell people it’s not a matter of IF, but WHEN). That would certainly explain the MBR getting corrupted, and not being able to access the drive at all. If your Windows system is not on G: drive (but on the usual C:), not sure why an inaccessible G: would be affecting the boot time at all. Another possible hardware issue is faulty RAM chips, as that will definitely make things run slower, not to mention corrupt files it accesses. If you find Windows getting corrupted, I would use the Ubuntu Live CD to check your memory for errors.
@Ubuntu Genius >Windows is in C.What i will do ,is i will use a CD to boot in and the we will give go for repair option.Does this repairs the master boot record file??
@Ubuntu Genius >
Now windows is booting up very slowly and all the applications are too slow.I have other data too in G drive.
i am using ubuntu and while configuring ftp server on my ubuntu i got error as use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at perl sub process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2) after going through lots of forums i got a solution.i was instructed to delete the line from status file after doing so i made a simple reboot but its not working now i m not able to start ubuntu as well as can not recover.help me
OK, assuming you can still end up at a command prompt, which you should be able to, especially if at the GRUB menu you choose to boot into Recovery Mode, see if the following command fixes things: sudo apt-get autoclean
actually i was using ubuntu 10.04 lts in my laptop, while watching videos in youtube i came to know i can update to 12.04 lts with (alt+f2) …. i actually clicked on update button…it was successfull for some time..and i don’t know what went wrong it stopped updating where it asked for restart…..i did it…. but
now the os is crashing …and in recovery mode i am getting a terminal …. could u please sort out this problem…………….
I can’t really be sure without knowing more, but for more minds working on this, you really should start a thread at the Ubuntu Forums. However, you mention in Recovery Mode you get to a command prompt – I’m assuming you read the article properly, but if not, it mentions at the prompt you need to enter your username then password before it actually gets anywhere. If you’ve done that but it still just ends at a command prompt, try entering startx – it should get you into the desktop.
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