In July, my computer began turning me back to the login page. I have tried everything on the internet with no joy.
This problem was on the live usb versions as well.
I took my machine to the local shop and they told me it was a motherboard failure. Gigabyte said there was no problem with the motherboard at all.
The problem continued, and still continues. I tried the Boot Repair Disk and that USB worked perfectly whereas no version of Ubuntu would work from a live USB.
After that I tried a live USB again, but this time I used the (previously unnoticed) safe graphics option and the problem disappeared.
I then reinstalled Ubuntu 26.04 and booted in. Same problem.
I then tried opening on safe mode, and used the dpkg option. I can now use the system under safe mode, with terrible display, but only under the safe mode.
I am assuming that the problem has something to do with graphics. Nothing I have seen on the internet helps at this point, but I am not really certain if that is the real problem.
Please tell us your full hardware specifications, namely graphics, since you suspect those, additional drivers version (if apllicable), Ubuntu release/version (desktop, server, other?)…
Also please describe succinctly and assertively what troubleshooting steps you tried and the results.
It’s helpful if you’re specific with details; you mention all summer, but summer where I live starts in December so we need location detail to make sense of that, so please give dates (months etc)
If your issue relates to graphics, some details of your machine graphics are required.
FYI: The software on your boot repair disk was quite probably older, and using a much older kernel, a clue in itself if you’re specific with details but you didn’t provide any. Ubuntu Desktop 26.04 LTS uses the 7.0 kernel (GA & HWE stacks; HWE will advance) where I bet your ‘repair disk’ had something older; which gives you at least one ‘workaround’ even if not a fix. Graphics drivers are actually kernel modules; thus different kernels can give different results (as the kernel module code will change).
First of all, Ask Ubuntu is probably the least welcoming place I have ever been for help. I remember going to this forum a few years ago and being redirected to Ask Ubuntu and assumed this forum had disappeared.
I find Ask Ubuntu to be rather unwelcoming and even punishing at some points. I am not an expert but I do know when I have a problem, I look at posts that give a complete run down of exactly what happened, so I will know if the problem is similar.
I came to this page because I found the Ask Ubuntu forum to be asking me to ignore the full story, and without that, there is no real story. Part of my problem was that many posts give a vague idea of what the situation was and offered help that ended up doing nothing or had to be reversed. There are a lot of posts about a login-loop and none of those worked.
I am using, as I do believe I mentioned, or the sort was for Ubuntu 26.04, so I thought that was a given. I believe the tags mentioned this was a desktop. I am using an AMD Ryzen 5 and a Gigabyte B650 board. No graphics card. In fact, no added cards. The machine worked fine for some eight months and then the problems began.
As to what I used previously to solve the problem, I would point you to any and all posts on the internet that mentioned anything like a login loop. None of them worked, but that might have been due to the fact that I had applied previous fixes that did not take but possibly altered the system.
This is a brand new reinstall from a freshly created live USB that I created on another, working, computer.
My biggest problem with the internet suggestions is that I was not always given nearly enough detail to judge whether I was looking at something that was even close to my problem.
Being complete, in the description of the problem, is far more valuable to many of us than a curt answer filled with guesses.
This is just a symptom that can have literally a million different causes, so just randomly trying other solutions without digging down to the root cause will in the worst case just damage your install even more …
You’ll have to obtain some more info by digging into logs and looking for exact errors …
(and indeed giving all the versions of involved parts of the system, all the HW info you can give etc is essential for the people here to help you)
I do not know that my problem is graphics related, but that seems to be the one thing that my temporary solution would seem to indicate. That is why I am here, to see if that is in the running for the problem.
Since I have just come out of summer, I would have thought that might be obvious. The implication is that I left the computer dead for six months. Sorry, but that is just what I would have assumed.
My Boot Repair Disk was a fresh copy, so right up to date. Even then it asked to be updated when I started it.
That last bit is real information that I can use. Since the system worked for some eight months without problems and suddenly threw up this problem a change of kernel could indicate the problem. I am religious about keeping my system up to date, and it could have been a kernel alteration in June, I do not pay much attention to what they are updating.
Cheers for this, I shall begin looking for kernel problems to see if that might throw up a solution.
That might be a problem since this is a clean reinstall. I have no idea if the system stores information from a previous install. On the other hand I do have the original /Home folder if that might contain what I need. Where do I look, if possible.
If you re-installed but kept the old home around, the first thing I’d suggest is to create a new test user and try with that one, there might be a broken user config in the old home dir that such a test would rule out…
Logs from the old install: those were in /var/log/journal on the system partition, not in /home, so the reinstall wiped them. You don’t need them though. The fresh install shows the same problem, so we can get new logs from that.
The test user idea is quick and worth doing, especially if you reused your old /home during the reinstall. That said, you mentioned the live USB loops too, and a live session has no old home folder at all. So I suspect the cause is lower down than user settings.
On the kernel theory, here’s a test that settles it: which Ubuntu versions did you try as live USBs? If an older release, like 24.04 LTS, also loops now, the kernel update isn’t the cause, because 24.04 uses a much older kernel. In that case, look at the hardware/BIOS side instead. The Boot Repair Disk working doesn’t rule this out, because it uses a lightweight desktop that probably doesn’t need 3D graphics. GNOME does.
What would help most, from a normal (not safe graphics) boot of the new install:
Let the login fail once.
Press Ctrl+Alt+F3, log in at the text prompt, and run:
Then paste the contents of those files here. That’ll show whether the graphics driver is failing, and why.
Things to try in the meantime:
In the BIOS: if EXPO (the memory overclock profile) is on, turn it off. The built-in Radeon graphics uses system RAM, so RAM that’s slightly unstable often shows up first as graphics trouble. Also check whether the BIOS was updated around July.
A kernel option known to help Ryzen 7000 built-in graphics: at the GRUB menu (hold Shift or tap Esc during boot), press e, find the line starting with linux, and add amdgpu.sg_display=0 to the end (remove nomodeset if it’s there). Press Ctrl+X to boot. It only applies to that one boot, so nothing is permanently changed.
A memory test (MemTest86 from a USB, a couple of passes). Since the shop suspected hardware, it’s worth ruling RAM in or out.
Cheers! That is a solution that I have not seen mentioned up to now. There were some storms the week before the problem began, if I remember correctly. I reinstalled after that, but the problem persisted. I shall try a new user profile. Cheers again!
I opened a new user profile and tried that, but the new profile has the same login-loop problem. I may have made another error in the setup, so I am going to open another profile and see if the problem still persists
So far, just to let you know I am not wasting your time completely, I checked the bios and EXPO was disabled.
The ‘Journalctl’ for the ‘amdgpu’ paid out nothing it simply returned a prompt. I have no idea if that is what it is supposed to do or not.
The ‘Journalctl’ for the ‘gnome shell’ also returned me to the prompt. Again I have no idea if that is normal.
The CPU ‘Model name’ gave me: “AMD Ryzen5 7600 6 core processor”
The ‘dmidecode’ output for ‘Bios -version’ came out with F31.
I do have some confusion with bios versions. I have read that I should use the latest version (F42) by some posts I have read and others that swear that to change it is just asking for lots more trouble. They all seem quite knowledgable, but the internet can be like that.
I booted into the GRUB menu and typed in ‘e’ and it just gave me the prompt again without displaying anything else. I am going to retry that in a few minutes.
The MemTest86 gave me a pass with no errors at all. I let it run for a number of hours, but it seemed to be redoing all the same tests, so I cut it off after eight passes.
In the same spirit, I ran “gnome-shell --version” and found: “GNOME Shell 50.1”
I do realise these are not equal to the “Journalctl” outputs, but I do hope they move things a little bit ahead.
I am now looking at “Journalctl” to see just why I am not getting a further report.
A quick look at “Journalctl” directs me to /var/logs. Looking at the ‘/var’ file shows no logs whatsoever. It does have an ‘/app’ file and that is it.I think that strange, but I am still looking in other places.
I have tried once early this morning with no response and again after reading your post.
This time it responded with “command ‘e’ not recognised (Or something to that effect.) This is acting funny, I am in recovery mode, so that might be part of the problem. Possibly I should boot from a live USB?
In case this might help, seeing as I seem to have a ‘systemctl’ problem, I ran ‘systemctl list-units --type=service’ to see just what it was actually doing. that line produced this, if it is of any help:
accounts-daemon.service loaded active running Active sub description
alsa-restore.service loaded active exited Sav>
apparmor.service loaded active exited Loa>
apport.service loaded active exited aut>
avahi-daemon.service loaded active running Ava>
chrony.service loaded active running chr>
colord.service loaded active running Man>
console-setup.service loaded active exited Set>
cron.service loaded active running Reg>
cups-browsed.service loaded active running Mak>
cups.service loaded active running CUP>
dbus.service loaded active running D-B>
dracut-shutdown.service loaded active exited Res>
gdm.service loaded active running GNO>
kdump-tools.service loaded active exited Ker>
keyboard-setup.service loaded active exited Set>
kmod-static-nodes.service loaded active exited Cre>
ModemManager.service loaded active running Mod>
netplan-configure.service loaded active exited Net>
networkd-dispatcher.service loaded active running Dis>
NetworkManager-wait-online.service loaded active exited Net>
NetworkManager.service loaded active running Net>
openvpn.service loaded active exited Ope>
plymouth-quit-wait.service loaded active exited Hol>
plymouth-read-write.service loaded active exited Tel>
polkit.service loaded active running Aut>
power-profiles-daemon.service loaded active running Pow>
rsyslog.service loaded active running Sys>
rtkit-daemon.service loaded active running Rea>
setvtrgb.service loaded active exited Set>
snapd.apparmor.service loaded active exited Loa>
snapd.seeded.service loaded active exited Wai>
snapd.service loaded active running Sna>
switcheroo-control.service loaded active running Swi>
sysstat.service loaded active exited Res>
lines 1-36
and the other half of the page:
LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION >
loaded active running Accounts Service
loaded active exited Save/Restore Sound Card State
loaded active exited Load AppArmor profiles
loaded active exited automatic crash report generation
loaded active running Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack
loaded active running chrony, an NTP client/server
loaded active running Manage, Install and Generate Color Profiles
loaded active exited Set console font and keymap
loaded active running Regular background program processing daemon
loaded active running Make remote CUPS printers available locally
loaded active running CUPS Scheduler
loaded active running D-Bus System Message Bus
loaded active exited Restore /run/initramfs on shutdown
loaded active running GNOME Display Manager
loaded active exited Kernel crash dump capture service
loaded active exited Set the console keyboard layout
loaded active exited Create List of Static Device Nodes
loaded active running Modem Manager
loaded active exited Netplan Backend Configuration
loaded active running Dispatcher daemon for systemd-networkd
loaded active exited Network Manager Wait Online
loaded active running Network Manager
loaded active exited OpenVPN service
loaded active exited Hold until boot process finishes up
loaded active exited Tell Plymouth To Write Out Runtime Data
loaded active running Authorization Manager
loaded active running Power Profiles daemon
loaded active running System Logging Service
loaded active running RealtimeKit Scheduling Policy Service
loaded active exited Set console scheme
loaded active exited Load AppArmor profiles managed internally by snapd
loaded active exited Wait until snapd is fully seeded
loaded active running Snap Daemon
loaded active running Switcheroo Control Proxy service
loaded active exited Resets System Activity Logs
lines 1-36
I am not certain exactly what this all means, but there may be a clue here that I do not percieve
Assuming you allowed a grub OS selection to be highlighted, you can press e to edit or c for grub prompt.
If neither of these worked, it would imply that grub is misbehaving or damaged somehow?