1

I've been running Ubuntu 18.04 in Virtualbox on a Windows 10 Dell XPS laptop. I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04. The upgrade went OK, but when I start the virtual image I get a purple screen with no login prompt. I can't do anything from there. I have tried to send a CTRL-ALT-F1 signal to get a console, but that got no response. Either Ubuntu didn't respond or the Virtualbox host key no longer defaults to the CTRL-ALT sequence. Weirdly, I have had a login on the Ubuntu 20.04 image, but I can't remember how I tricked it into that. Any ideas?

cj_rupp
  • 11

3 Answers3

0

I generated a new image for Ubuntu 20.04 from the .iso release. So the situation has resolved itself. But, there's still a number of things I don't know. I don't know if trying to update a virtual image was wrong in itself. I don't know if grub was failing to raise the login window, or if one of the customisations I had made, in the usual manner, was causing the login (splash screen?) to block. I hope I don't stumble on something with the new image, but so far so good. Some experience, but not very much learning.

cj_rupp
  • 11
0

I had the same problem, remove Guest Additions fixed for me:

  • boot in recovery mode and login on root shell
  • disable GUI on boot ( systemctl set-default multi-user.target )
  • reboot and login with my regular user at prompt
  • manually start GUI (startx)
  • uninstall VBOX Guest Additions from mounted virtual CD (VBoxLinuxAdditions.run uninstall)
  • enable GUI on boot (sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target)
  • reboot
massimo morselli
  • 1
0

I had the same problem. Fortunately, I could remotely login to the system (as everything worked).

So, to solve the issue I opened the /etc/default/grub with a text editor and changed the:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to

 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text quiet"

Next, the grub should have been updated with the following command:

sudo update-grub

After reboot, the login prompt re-appeared - again. Hope it helps.

(Ps. Interestingly, it happened with me two years ago when I upgraded from 16.04 to 18.04...)

aszoke
  • 101