[ale] Upgrading to 9.10 hosed my system

[Ryan Marshall]

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 7:58 AM, <ale-request at ale.org> wrote:

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> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:02:31 -0600
> From: JK <jknapka at kneuro.net>
> Subject: [ale] Upgrading to 9.10 hosed my system :-(
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> Message-ID: <4AECEC37.3080805 at kneuro.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
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> I just upgraded my excellent 9.04 Ubuntu box to 9.10, and now all has
> turned to sh*t.  X won't start, the screen flickers madly even in
> text mode, and the keyboard doesn't work right - it only sees approximately
> every fifth key I type. This is just a disaster :-((( (imagine the little
> overhead bar meaning "last '(' repeated infinitely").
>
> Any advice?  I can at least log in via ssh, so I can copy /home off
> somewhere else and do a fresh install of 9.04.  Seems like there should
> be an easier way.  (I am generally clueless about modern package
> management, all I know how to do with apt is "install some_package".
> It is a sad state of affairs for a person who first built a 0.90
> kernel off floppies in 1992.)
>
> Very very sad :-(
>
> -- JK
>
> PS - WAAAH!
>
>
>
I had the exact same issue last night while trying to switch over to the
binary nVidia drivers.

If I understand correctly, it seems like the X server is constantly crashing
and reloading.  On mine, the hard drive light was flashing in sync with the
screen flicker.

Anyway, I rebooted it, brought it up into recovery mode, did a
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg out of habit and then ran the .run from the
nVidia driver package that I had downloaded after the Ubuntu automated
install failed repeatedly.  Follow the steps in the .run file and got a
beautiful composited desktop on next reboot.

YMMV.
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