Ubuntu 20.04 does not boot

[grahammechanical]

If I purge all nvidia drivers and install series 450 drivers in the recovery mode terminal, I can boot up the GUI, but it is worthless because the desktop resolution is limited to sometimes 640x480 or 800x600. I'm not sure why sometimes I get one resolution over the other.

Recovery mode - Resume normal boot usually loads to a low resolution video driver. A reboot should load with the install proprietary driver.

Any suggestions for which nvidia driver I should install in 'Additional Software' tab of the software updater utility? 'Proprietary, tested', or 'nouveaux' (not sure I spelled that right)?

"proprietary, tested" is the video driver from Nvidia. "Nouveau" is the open source video driver for Nvidia video adapters. It has a higher range of resolutions than the Resume - normal boot open source video driver.

The Nvidia web site suggests 352.63 as the Nvidia driver for Quadro 1000M notebooks. Later drivers should also work. But keep in mind that Nvidia often drop support for older video adapters from newer drivers. So, the very latest driver from Nvidia will not necessarily support all older video adapters.

https://www.nvidia.com/download/driv....aspx/95159/en

Additional drivers will often offer more than one proprietary video driver.

There are some commands we can run if we are at recovery mode and have selected Network - Enable networking and then Root - drop to root shell prompt.

ubuntu-drivers list

Will list proprietary video drivers.

 ubuntu-drivers devices

will give us information about our video adapter.

ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

will install the proprietary video driver. These commands can also be run from a terminal when we are on the desktop. They will need to be prefaced with "sudo" and followed with our user password.

Regards

[cst-ramirez]

Your boot repair output shows that you have EFI partitions on both sda and sdb. sda has entries for both windows and Ubuntu.

That is unfortunate. I will need to clean that up somehow, I'm dedicating sda to Windows and sdb to Debian Linux.

Is that the drive you are booting from to try to boot Ubuntu? Have you tried setting sdb to first boot priority in the BIOS firmware and booting Ubuntu? Do you have an option in your BIOS firmware on boot to boot from EFI file? Can you select Ubuntu there (Boot0009)?

Yes to all of the above, sdb is usually first in boot priority along with Boot0009. I can select it specifically, and that is usually how I boot up Ubuntu. It makes no difference, unfortunately. With 'nomodeset' specified, I can boot up the GUI, but without it, I cannot boot up the GUI at all.

There is an interesting development, however. I just happened to have my laptop connected to an external display, and Ubuntu 20.04 booted up the GUI on the external monitor only. It was in full 1920x1080 resolution, and even recognized the make and model of the display in the settings menu. It did not recognize the laptop display at all. When I rebooted Ubuntu with 'nomodeset' specified, then my laptop display was working, but only at 640x480 resolution, and the external display was not recognized. Also, the laptop display was called "unknown display" in the settings menu, and I think the laptop display is not being recognized somehow, and 'nomodeset' does not allow the external monitor to be recognized. Any thoughts about any of this?

Also, I am still unable to get gdisk to successfully resolve the partition table errors. The problems always revert back after a reboot. I have only attempted gdisk in Linux environment however. I have not tried the Windows version of gdisk. I might try that once I run out of options.

[cst-ramirez]

Recovery mode - Resume normal boot usually loads to a low resolution video driver. A reboot should load with the install proprietary driver.



"proprietary, tested" is the video driver from Nvidia. "Nouveau" is the open source video driver for Nvidia video adapters. It has a higher range of resolutions than the Resume - normal boot open source video driver.

The Nvidia web site suggests 352.63 as the Nvidia driver for Quadro 1000M notebooks. Later drivers should also work. But keep in mind that Nvidia often drop support for older video adapters from newer drivers. So, the very latest driver from Nvidia will not necessarily support all older video adapters.



Additional drivers will often offer more than one proprietary video driver.

There are some commands we can run if we are at recovery mode and have selected Network - Enable networking and then Root - drop to root shell prompt.

ubuntu-drivers list

Will list proprietary video drivers.

Here's my output for this command:

$ ubuntu-drivers list
WARNING:root:_pkg_get_support nvidia-driver-390: package has invalid Support Legacyheader, cannot determine support level
nvidia-340
nvidia-driver-390, (kernal modules provided by linux-modules-nvidia-390-generic-hew-20.04)

 ubuntu-drivers devices

will give us information about our video adapter.

Here's the output to this command:

$ ubuntu-drivers devices
WARNING:root:_pkg_get_support nvidia-driver-390: package has invalid Support Legacyheader, cannot determine support level
== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0 ==
modalias : pci:v000010DEd00000DFAsv00001028sd000004A3bc03sc00i00
vendor : NVIDIA Corporation
model : GF108GLM [Quadro 1000M]
driver : nvidia-340 - distro non-free
driver : nvidia-driver-390 - distro non-free recommended
driver : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

will install the proprietary video driver. These commands can also be run from a terminal when we are on the desktop. They will need to be prefaced with "sudo" and followed with our user password.

Regards

The drivers installed, and I checked with the previous two commands and nothing changed. When I rebooted Ubuntu I got a purple screen and mouse, but not log-in prompt. No little icons at the top for wifi indicators and such. I was going to hard power off the laptop, but the GUI responded to pressing the power button. I opted to reboot the machine the correct way, and got the same result. With the drivers I installed with

ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

I can no longer log-in to Ubuntu. I might try purging the nvidia drivers and installing the 352.63 driver, or maybe the 390.147 driver (https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/184603/en-us). When I went through nvidia's drop-down menu labyrinth, it navigated me to that driver set which has confirmed compatibility for my GPU.

Thanks, everyone.

[cst-ramirez]

I am actually able to progress past the purple screen by hitting the spacebar and typing the password. Then both my external monitor and my laptop display work. The laptop display is recognized as a laptop display instead of just an unknown display. I was able to install the 'proprietary, tested' driver and reboot the machine. Unfortunately, as soon as the external monitor is unplugged, the laptop display goes black again. I decided to type my password in just to see if anything happened, but it did not. I'm so close to making this work!

[MAFoElffen]

There are many 'cooks' in the mix already and I hesitate to interject... I thought this was being resolved so I stayed out of this, but I see there still are problems.

May I be of assistance?

I see unknown variables and information, that if answered would make this all very simple. What I saw right off, is that, if Dell, and Windows 10, it was EFI... Danced around a bit but that is solid, known, and just a fact. There are things that go along with that...

Has anyone asked you what your EFI security BIOS settings are? SecureBoot? FastBoot Setting in BIOS? Your BIOS setting for the HDD/SATA mode? Is your Windows Power Settings on Button 'press' set to Power Off instead of Hibernate?

Has anyone asked you what the system BIOS Version was? What the Brand and model of your NVMe was that is not being seen? (and if their was a firmware update for that?) brand/model) Of what version and flavor of your install media is and how it was prepared?

Just curious. A lot of those questions would be answered by running the Ubuntu Forums 'system-info' script in my signature line, so that by reading that report, people trying to help can go off the facts, instead of guessing. That is just helping to make an informed recommendation.

Just a thought... Help them to help you. That is only common sense and fair, right?

Having been a Dell Certified Warranty Service Tech... But also having been supporting Ubuntu forever... I know some of the Dell UEFI Firmware settings will prevent Ubuntu from seeing your NVMe drive, but if blindly flipped, will make your drive unreadable by Win 10. There are ways to reconcile those...

[cst-ramirez]

There are many 'cooks' in the mix already and I hesitate to interject... I thought this was being resolved so I stayed out of this, but I see there still are problems.

May I be of assistance?

Of course!

I see unknown variables and information, that if answered would make this all very simple. What I saw right off, is that, if Dell, and Windows 10, it was EFI... Danced around a bit but that is solid, known, and just a fact. There are things that go along with that...

Has anyone asked you what your EFI security BIOS settings are? SecureBoot? FastBoot Setting in BIOS? Your BIOS setting for the HDD/SATA mode? Is your Windows Power Settings on Button 'press' set to Power Off instead of Hibernate?

The direct answer is no, I have not been asked these questions. To address these questions, my BIOS does not have secureboot as an option. TPM is enabled, but I guess that is different from secureboot. Fastboot is apparently enabled. I'm not sure what you mean by the BIOS setting for HDD/SATA mode, unfortunately. My power button is set to sleep, apparently.

Has anyone asked you what the system BIOS Version was? What the Brand and model of your NVMe was that is not being seen? (and if their was a firmware update for that?) brand/model) Of what version and flavor of your install media is and how it was prepared?

No has asked me these questions either, but one of them I have already divulged: I have tried installing Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and 32-bit 16.04 and 14.04. I have also tried Kubuntu 20.04, Lubuntu 20.04, Xubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu-MATE 20.04. My BIOS version is A19. As for NVMe firmware, I'm not sure that I have any. My SSDs are SATA: 2.5 inch and mSATA. Do SATA devices get NVMe controllers?

Just curious. A lot of those questions would be answered by running the Ubuntu Forums 'system-info' script in my signature line, so that by reading that report, people trying to help can go off the facts, instead of guessing. That is just helping to make an informed recommendation.

Just a thought... Help them to help you. That is only common sense and fair, right?

Having been a Dell Certified Warranty Service Tech... But also having been supporting Ubuntu forever... I know some of the Dell UEFI Firmware settings will prevent Ubuntu from seeing your NVMe drive, but if blindly flipped, will make your drive unreadable by Win 10. There are ways to reconcile those...

I will run this script in an hour or so. Thanks for all the suggestions, hope that something makes sense!

[cst-ramirez]

Just curious. A lot of those questions would be answered by running the Ubuntu Forums 'system-info' script in my signature line, so that by reading that report, people trying to help can go off the facts, instead of guessing.

Here's the pastebin link:
https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/QRtTXhRn2s/

Cheers.

[TheFu]

That is unfortunate. I will need to clean that up somehow, I'm dedicating sda to Windows and sdb to Debian Linux.

I'll add my $0.02.

You can't really do that with UEFI. There should be 1 UEFI boot area in the system. It should be shared by all the OSes. Otherwise, you'll need to manually change the BIOS boot drive before each boot, which is a pain. Also, whenever a new kernel gets installed, it having multiple EFI areas will be confusing to the update program. In short, I think it is a bad idea.

You can have /boot and / for Ubuntu on partitions under sdb, no problem. Just the EFI area probably needs to remain on sda.

I had a Quattro GPU. It lost support in 2016, so only the nouveau drivers worked and only at 768p. This is an nvidia issue, nothing to do with Linux or Ubuntu.
So, it appears that GPU still has current support. The
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall command should get the best driver for that GPU under 20.04. I see there was an update earlier this month. With Linux, never download GPU drivers directly from the vendor. Always use the Canonical validated versions, which will be installed either using the GUI or that command. Then your weekly patching will get any new, approved-by-Canonical, releases of the drivers.

I'm not a fan of dual boot setups. You can run a virtual machine to have either Ubuntu or Windows run concurrently on the same hardware. This method completely removes the physical install issues, since the hypervisor will provide only the best supported virtual hardware to the guest OS. For typical business desktops, using a VM will provide 90% of the speed that running on real hardware can provide with only 1 exception - heavy GPU tasks. I wouldn't do video editing in a VM or gaming, but everything else I do in a VM and have for over a decade.

Most 18.04 flavors of Ubuntu lost support earlier this year. Only the non-GUI "Server" and the Gnome3 DE still have support, I believe. Lubuntu, Ubuntu-Mate, Xubuntu and the others get 3 yrs of "LTS" support. I'm unsure about KDE/Kubuntu.