I experimented quite a bit during the last two days, so the results are now ready to report. To summarize my efforts, I managed to get X11 up and running, but I am still not sure where the issue originated.
To Robert Hooker: I did: echo FRAMEBUFFER=y | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash and updated initramfs but that didn't help. First of all, right now I am running X11 without a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf: na...@serre:~$ ls /etc/X11/xorg.conf ls: cannot access /etc/X11/xorg.conf: No such file or directory It seems strange to me. Did the config file location change recently? Originally, I was running xdm as a login manager. Switching to gdm helped me fix the issue. In general, it seems gdm is "smarter", so it caught the fact X11 failed to start. It shows an emergency dialog which helped me recover the system. By recover, it seems all it did was remove my file xorg.conf. After rebooting I was fine. Here are some conclusions I reached. 1. Apparently 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg' does not change the file xorg.conf. (I ran this command multiple times before, and it did not help. I only realised it did not change the configuration file later). 2. Gdm is much starter than xdm in terms of failstart. It seems to me that any emergency utility should be separate from gdm, so it can be reused with other login managers (e.g. xdm). 3. There has been a regression in xdm/X11 or something about their compatibility. (Switching back to xdm brings my system back to the useless state. Surprisingly, startx yields those errors I listed above. I imagines startx should do its job regardless of the login manager.) The items I listed above could either be gaps in my understanding, or real issues with X11, and its friends. Could someone test a few of these and let me know? I would be happy to provide further details or run more tests. -- Xserver does not start due to drm problem https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/565643 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs