Unity will not start up - System Is Running in Low Graphics Mode

[Matt3223]

Hello all, I am having some difficulties on my ubuntu 16.04.2 install that seems to have started after a dist-upgrade I performed on 2017-06-17. (might be coincidence, but is the only thing of note I can think of).

I get the following pop-up box once ubuntu begins attempting to load:

The System is running in low-graphics mode
Your screen, graphics card, and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure these yourself.

I am able to switch to terminal via ctrl+f1 and log-in. Upon logging I just now noticed that there was a message indicating the following:

[ 57.361112] systemd-logind[1526]: Failed to enable subscription: Launch helper exited with unknown return co... (I think that is supposed to be "command", my snapshot cut off...)
[ 57.361165] systemd-logind[1526]: Failed to fully start up daemon: Input/output error

I did not see that during the irc troubleshooting I reference below, so that was not known at the time by the person assisting me.

History of the system:
Have had 16.04 installed for several months with no issues. I have an RX460 graphics card and have installed the AMDGPU-PRO-16.50.

I also have Solus and Windows installed on seperate partitions, they both boot up and function fine.

I have done some troubleshooting via #ubuntu on freenode, but we were unable to come up with much beyond the desktop is not starting up. I will post the relavant termbin.com links below.


info from cat var/log/apt/history.log info: http://termbin.com/k272 (start-date: 2017-06-17 is when I believe the issues started. the 2017-06-18 entry I did today from the terminal.)

info from lshw -C display : http://termbin.com/2dvc

info from cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log : http://termbin.com/28q1

info from cat /var/log/gpu-manager.log : http://termbin.com/sxdj

info form lsmod | grep amdgpu : http://termbin.com/kg3j

info from cat .xsession-errors in ~ : http://termbin.com/h48i

I am just a user, thus have limited self-directed troubleshooting knowledge, but I know enough to follow some directions.

I also tried to restart lightdm, with sudo restart lightdm, but got a message stating:

Restart: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: connection refused

Looking for some assistance, thanks!

[again?]

Are you getting to the unity greeter/login screen?
If so, you can install the flashback session to give an xsession to work in while you attempt to fix.

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends gnome-session-flashback

Then at the greeter see if you can log into the Gnome Flashback(Metacity) session.

[Matt3223]

Nope, sorry, the system doesn't make it to the greeter. After hitting enter (or waiting) at Grub, a line will pop up like:

/dev/sda6: clean ...### files, ...### blocks...

Then the screen will go blank again, then the window will pop up on the blank screen talking about low-graphics mode.

[again?]

Nope, sorry, the system doesn't make it to the greeter. After hitting enter (or waiting) at Grub, a line will pop up like:


Then the screen will go blank again, then the window will pop up on the blank screen talking about low-graphics mode.

You mentioned you could login to a tty.
I had an experience recently where in Ubuntu-gnome the display manager gdm3 was failing to load.
If the issue is with lightdm you could try installing another display manager to see if it loads.

In my case I installed slim which enabled me to log in to a graphical session and troubleshoot.

sudo apt install slim

You should be presented with a dialog to choose your display manager.
If not run

sudo dpkg-reconfigure slim

If you still don't get a greeter must be graphics driver related and
I will leave for someone familiar with amd graphics.

You can switch back to the lightdm display manager by running

sudo apt remove slim
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

[Matt3223]

hmm, no luck there, after choosing slim, I no longer get the pop up window about low-graphics, but the system hangs on a black screen with a blinking cursor and I can no longer access tty1
(off to bed now, will check back in a.m.)

[again?]

Oh sorry about that.
ctrl+alt+F1 still brought up a tty when I Installed slim.
You can remove slim and reconfigure lightdm in Recovery Mode.

[Matt3223]

yeah no worries, was worth a shot. I'll try and reset via recovery mode and go from there...

I have been trying to see what messages are going across during boot, but haven't succeeded... would those be in a log some where... ? I'll google around and try to find some systemd logs. Something is going wrong early in the process.

[Matt3223]

OK, i have reconfigured lightdm and we are back to where we began.


here is the apport.log... anything informative in here? http://termbin.com/reh6

not sure what the no dbus session bus address means..