Blank screen after upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04!

Linux and Unix-Like Ubuntu
1

Hello,
I got blank screen when reboot after I tried to upgrade Ubuntu (64 bit server version) from 11.10 to 12.04 at update manager.
The normal login GUI is missing, but mouse cursor is fine. Then I switched to terminal (tty1 ~ tty6), which looked fine and showed it is Ubuntu 12.04 ! (Forgot how I got it, but I did see it is 12.04 and I was reminded

12.10 is available!

The upgrade seems completed, at least partially, but the logon GUI is missing! I had thought the upgrade is broken, and have tried many different ways to fix it:

1) sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
2) sudo do-release-upgrade
3) sudo dpkg --configure -a
4) sudo apt-get -f install
5) sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

None worked!
Had thought the upgrade is simple by the above commands, but did not turn out as expected!
And the error massage were too long to be posted here( have not figured out yet how to copy pasted the message here as they were saved in the crashed PC!)
Generally some errors with the upgrade can be fixed after reboot thru synaptic manager. This time it is not the case as I can't boot at all!
Before I burn a setup CD to give my last shot, I am trying get help from here first.
Thanks a lot in advance! YT

2

If you are able to get to a terminal and login, enter:

startx

as a command. It may start your gui desktop. If not, you shoud see errors that will help to correct the problem. Do you use an NVIDIA video card? If so and the driver didn't install, then use VESA in the GRUB start options.

Hope this helps.

3

Thanks GTrip!

For some reason, it did not work!
How can I copy the screen output of

dpkg --configure -a

from the crashed computer to a file?
I use

dpkg --confugre -a 1>&2 dpkg_conf_a.log

But only the first three lines were saved. Any trick for this?
Thanks again!

YT

4

Save the output of a command to a file in your home dir:

ls -a >> ~/myfile.txt

So, what did not work with the last suggestions? If you can get to a shell command prompt and login,

("I switched to terminal (tty1 ~ tty6), which looked fine and showed it is Ubuntu 12.04 !")

you should be able to have success with "startx" to bring up a GUI desktop, OR it should give error output. If you can't login to a shell, then that's another story.

5

Thanks GTrip!

I can't remember exactly what it was, but it did not bring the GUI back and I switched to look for other solutions.

I tried

apt-get -f install;

and long list of errors, that's why I was asking to how to save the STDOUT to files for diagnosis. I noticed many of the errors are libqt4 related, several mysql and perl related. I can't copy the error logs from the crashed machine, which is another frustrating thing! And my colleague recommend a new fresh installation from the beginning, which I do not want to do as I was not expecting this breakdown and no backup was done before I start (I know this is stupid, but I tried another upgrade without any problem, so I had thought it should be fine!)

Anyway, it seems to me the upgrade was complete except the GUI is not back. Do you have other clues? I appreciate if you could walk me thru this. Thanks a lot!
YT