How to boot to login session after freeze , forced reboot and black screen

Question

I Burned the latest ISO of Ubuntu LTS, probably 22.04 if I'm not mistaken. I installed on a computer which has Windows installed. I have an HP Elitebook 840 G10, (HSN i45c-4). It ran OK for three days.

It started to show unusual lags, for example when opening a folder, since yesterday.

After first boot-up I upgraded apt and packages with sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade.

This morning while working I turned accessibility feature Screen Reader on some qt6 application and fourth or five tabs in Firefox. Nothing fancy and then everything crashes. My desktop restarted.

Then I had issue connecting with wired Ethernet. I had to turn on WiFi.

I use a VPN to navigate internet. I tried to install an app through the market, but the market freezes and asks me to kill it.

I installed FUSE with apt and launched qbtorrent with AppImage to download a file, then started the download, locked the computer, notice the computer login session has frozen. I could still move the mouse, but nothing was responsive. I left the computer in this state for an hour, but nothing changed. I decide to hold power button to force shutdown. It rebooted normally, but landed on a black screen with the following messages:

[OK] Finished snapd.seeded.service - Wait until snapd is fully seeded.
[OK] Started thermald.service - Thermal Daemon Service.
[OK] Started systemd-timedated.service - Time & Date Service.
[OK] Started upower.service - Daemon for power management.
[OK] Starting alsa-restore.service - Save/Restore Sound Card State...
[OK] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: WRT: Invalid buffer destination
[OK] Started NetworkManager.service - Network Manager.
[OK] Reached target network.target
[OK] Starting NetworkManager-wait-online.service - Network Manager Wait Online
[OK] Starting cups.service - CUPS Scheduler...
[OK] Starting openvpn.service - OpenVPN service...
[OK] Starting systemd-user-sessions.service - Permit User Sessions...
[OK] Started unattended-upgrades.service - Unattended Upgrades Shutdown
[OK] Finished openvpn.service - OpenVPN service.
[OK] Finished systemd-user-sessions.service - Permit User Sessions.
[OK] Starting gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager...
[OK] Starting plymouth-quit-wait.service - Wait until boot process finishes u
[OK] Started cups.service - CUPS Scheduler.

It's non-responsive. I then reboot using Ctrl+Alt+Super. If I plug a second monitor through a USB-C dock it now prints with second monitor mirrored:

evdi: [I] (card2) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card4) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card4) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card5) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card5) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card2) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card2) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card4) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card4) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card5) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card5) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card2) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card2) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card4) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card4) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card5) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card5) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card2) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card2) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card4) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card4) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card5) Opened by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card5) Closed by Task 1171 (gpu-manager) of process 1171 (gpu-manager)
evdi: [I] (card3) Opened by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card3) Closed by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card4) Opened by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card4) Closed by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card2) Opened by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card2) Closed by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card5) Opened by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card5) Closed by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card5) Opened by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card5) Closed by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card3) Opened by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card3) Closed by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card4) Opened by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card4) Closed by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card2) Opened by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
evdi: [I] (card2) Closed by Task 292 (plymouthd) of process 292 (plymouthd)
[FAILED] Failed to start NetworkManager-wait-online.service - Network Manager Wait Online.

I don't have much data on the laptop, but I would like to be able to login again. Although I could burn another image, I would like to understand what caused this issue to avoid it reoccurring later. I am very surprised by this behavior. I am also lost on what to do next to try troubleshoot this issue.

Answer 1

I have found access to a tty I remembered that I had to use Ctrl+Alt+F2 to gain access to tty2. When trying to login to my session I had a screen with this message:

Oh no! something has gone wrong. 
A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. 
Please log out and try again.

with one button "log out" that brings me back to my tty2.

Using dmesg | grep error I have following output.

3.472374] hp_umi: query 0x4 returned error 0x5
5.793098] traps: gdm3 [1491] trap int3 ip:79f26435b6a1 sp:7ffef4c5dbe0 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.8000.0[79f264317000+a0000
7.334754] traps: gdm3 [1672] trap int3 ip:7f5c2b0026a1 sp:7fff55f87b50 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.8000.0[7f5c2afbe000+80000
8.744175] traps: gdm3 [1710] trap int3 ip:76a6f60886a1 sp:7ffcf98ff8b0 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.8000.0[76a6f6044000+30000
0.038943] traps: gdm3 [1793] trap int3 ip:7cface8446a1 sp:7ffe0579afc0 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.8000.0[7cface800000+20000
1.537871] traps: gdm3 [1837] trap int3 ip:72b5d42886a1 sp:7ffdbdc51710 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.8000.0[72b5d4244000+a0000
HP-EliteBook-840:/home/user#

My troubleshooting led me to believe that it's related to GDM (Gnome Display Manager). This correlates to the fact that I had to install a driver for displaylink evdi to mirror my monitor through a dell USB C dock which was not display my screen before this.

Here's the action I took to remedy to the issue :

# Temporarily disable the problematic iwlwifi driver:
sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi
sudo modprobe iwlwifi
# If the issue persists, blacklist the driver temporarily
echo "blacklist iwlwifi" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
# Use an Ethernet connection or another WiFi dongle.
# evdi logs indicate potential compatibility issues with DisplayLink (external monitor). Try removing the DisplayLink manager:
sudo apt remove displaylink evdi
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade # unfinished updates
sudo apt install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop # Reinstall GNOME or necessary components
sudo systemctl restart snapd # if snap services are causing issues
at this point startx was not producing the previous screen, instead a log say it was shutting down
For GNOME (default on Ubuntu):
sudo systemctl restart gdm
Gnome starts and I can login
Reinstall and reconfigure the graphics driver.
sudo apt install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-video-all
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Some commands might be optional. Unfortunately I haven't mastered Unix internals and this is what I've done to resolve this issue which is about Gnome crashing after installing graphics driver to use a second screen (Dell). I don't have references to give for the screen models.