[XORG] Spent two hours trying to boot several installs with the same results...

[oshunluvr]

I had to disconnect my desktop PC recently (see news on hurricane Florence ) and upon reassembly it wouldn't boot to KDEneon 16.04, or KDEneon 18.04 or Kubuntu 18.04! What gives?

I even tried a rollback to a previous snapshot with the same results. After about 12 different kernels and finally figuring out that I could only boot to "upstart" mode or else I got a black screen and no TTYs. Unfortunately, with upstart mode (instead of systemd) I got no X. Xorg.0.log revealed an "no screens found" and dmesg showed an odd error referring a systemd being unable to load the user profile (or something like that). Nothing really connected.

Then I looked at my pile of cables on my desk and I noticed a second Display Port cable there. I had been having sound card issues and odd screen blanking behavior earlier in the month and had acquired a second DP cable to see if that was the issue or the monitor.

Well, swapping the cables took a minute or so and I rebooted normally and not only did it boot and load the log in screen, but the sound worked and the screen blanking issue is solved.

Lesson here is when error messages and behaviors don't make sense - go back to the basics and look at the hardware. A simple $5 cable caused all these issues.

[Qqmike]

I'm no doubt repeating myself from previous threads where this has come up, but the hardware guys have a more-to-the-point way of putting it: "It's the cable, stupid!" Which usually means cable and/or re-seating the connectors. Glad you found and fixed it.

[vinnywright]

so it was not booting because it was not properly detecting a monitor ?

I guess that would do it .

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

That's the thing about Mother Nature ... she gives you the test first and then the lesson!

[kc1di]

Ah, the trails and tribulations of computing We've all been there at one time or the other.

[Qqmike]

so it was not booting because it was not properly detecting a monitor ?

I had that happen once, and an expert-friend explained why--which got complicated, but the firmware ("BIOS") does its checks and wants to get a good signal regarding graphics during POST. In my case, my firmware-"BIOS" was the cause--it was damaged and so had to be re-flashed (with a file from the motherboard maker ASUS).

[oshunluvr]

The odd thing was the monitor was detected by the PC at boot time, and grub, and Kubuntu/KDEneon, up until desktop loading - then it failed. Somewhere around reboot 25 the BIOS stopped recognizing the monitor all of a sudden. That was my hint.