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Black screen blinking prompt during apt upgrade: what to do? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/linuxonthinkpad

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1179690

I just did an apt update followed by an apt upgrade, and during the latter the screen went all blank with a blinking prompt. Unresponsive to keyboard and touchpad. I also hear the fans. It's been like this for 10 min now. I think some Nvidia drivers were included in the upgrade. What to do? Is it safe to emergency reboot? I appreciate any suggestions also for post-checks. Cheers!

Update: The suggestion by @[email protected] worked!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can try to switch to a different tty by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2 through F6. If that works, check your logs to see what went wrong or try running the update again. If it doesn't work, rebooting is your only choice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you. I don't know if it's a coincidence, but doing that brought the desktop back, and everything seemed normal. I closed everything and rebooted just to be on the safe side.

If you have (time and) any hypotheses on what could have been, I'd be curious to hear.

Thank you again!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nvidia driver updates have a tendency to crash X, so that's probably what happened.

If it works now, you don't need to worry about anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think that's what happened. Will be ready next time...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Had the same thing happen to me the other day. Rebooted and changed to another terminal with ctrl+alt+f2 then re-ran apt upgrade. It failed with a message saying to run some dpkg command first. It was finally able to recompile the kernel and get the nvidia drivers installed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Wow that sounds much more distressing!

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