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xuq01
Asked: 2018-08-11 21:11:12 +0800 CST

Blank screen with only mouse cursor (Ubuntu 18.04)

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So, I've been experiencing this issue lately. I'm on Ubuntu 18.04, GDM/Gnome, default Ubuntu desktop. My graphics driver is nvidia-390 from the graphics-drivers PPA. My graphics card is a GeForce GTX 960M.

There have been two incidents where my display freezes and I'm unable to get into a TTY, so I shut down and restart by power cycling. Then, I get to the login screen and login, only to get a blank screen with only the cursor.

Now, If I go into a TTY and look at Xorg.0.log, there's one weird thing: Xorg seems to think all of my devices are keyboards. I can't post a copy of it, unfortunately. If I look at journalctl --human, I see a lot of lines saying that i2c_hid_get_input generates incomplete report. I am not sure how to interpret those.

The first time, I fixed it by reinstalling the system. Now I really don't want to do this anymore.

gnome xorg gdm graphics 18.04

3 Answers

  1. I have the same issue. I use an external monitor. My laptop's monitor stays black with a cursor blinking, Whenever I restart I can only login using a tty, on my laptop's monitor. Then it turns black and I can type sudo systemctl restart gdm3. Graphics start on my external monitor, but my laptop's monitor stays black with the cursor... I am using nvidia-396, this is the recommended driver for my GeForce 1010. Try an external monitor see if it gets recognized.

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  2. This issue might resolve by this solution.

    Adding the nomodeset parameter instructs the kernel to not load video drivers and use BIOS modes instead until X is loaded. As explained here.

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  3. I had a similar issue. (Ubuntu 18.04 Dell precision 7550)

    The solution below worked for me:

    1. Secure boot off.

    2. Run the following command on the terminal:

      sudo ubuntu-drivers install

    3. Restart.

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