SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Hi all. Been a while, eh? Anyways, my beautiful machine has worked almost flawlessly for 4 years now with nary a problem until now. Upon booting up today, it will boot into tty1 or if I restart, I'll get the message Could not write bytes: Broken pipes and nothing else. I've done a search and most of the similar problems are on dual boots machines (which I don't use). Still, I tried following their fixes but nothing works. I'm at a loss of what to do. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 lts. Ideas please? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ichase Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Sue!!!!!!!! So great to see you again. I hope you have been well. Let's see what we got here. So you never get past tty1? Did you by chance try Ctrl+Alt+F1 before the broken pipe error displays to see if you can log in via terminal? Also, was there any major changes made prior to this happening? Driver updates, installing a particular package etc? Do you still have the boot disk or thumbdrive for 12.04? If not, you can get it online of course. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 *waves* Hiya Ian! Long time no see. I've been very well, thank you. Hope you can say the same? There was some kind of hardware update recently but I can't remember exactly what (nvidia, maybe?) or when. And yeah, I tried Ctrl+Alt+F1 and can't get in at all from there. Startx gives me something that says no startx found or similar. At the moment, it's sitting at the no pipes thingy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Hey Sue! Great to see you!! I found this over at Ubuntu forums here: SOLVED: could not write bytes: Broken pipe My problem was plural errors which led to non-guru confusion loop inside my brain. I fixed it after consulting several forum help-request posts (mostly answered by bogan). Broken pipe went away by re-upgrading nvidia from scratch, like so... sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get purge nvidia-* sudo apt-get install invida-current-updates Which repaired the mis-match in drivers. But that still left me stuck in a password entry loop (same as before but without the broken pipe message flashing in between). The reason for the login loop was that root now had ownership of my Xauthority file. Per another how-to, I just removed it, like so... sudo rm .Xauthority Then I rebooted and all was hunky dory. Thanks to all Hope it helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Hiya Sue, welcome back! BTW in Fran's post above, there is a misprint on the last apt-get command.. It should say sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 Hi Fran and Josh! I still drop by from time to time, just to make sure you're all behaving. I'm just not usually logged in. Grr, I hate this laptop, it deleted a whole whack of stuff I'd written. Bottom line, I did the commands (including Josh's correction for the 3rd) and got the following... The following informationmay help resolve the situation: The following package have unmet dependecies:nvidial-current-updates : Depends : nvidia-304-updates but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held brokenb packages 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Try running this command: sudo apt-get install -f 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 Aw man, why can't my problems be small? Just tried that command then the other 3. Still a no-go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 That command will force the other command to complete. So what happened after you ran the last command I gave you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Once you have the problem solved, you might consider doing weekly backups, system and data. Just a thought. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Once you have the problem solved, you might consider doing weekly backups, system and data. Just a thought. I use clonezilla to make weekly snapshots of my installation partition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 After doing sudo apt-get install -f, nothing happened, just back to the prompt. That's why I did those 3 commands again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Perhaps: http://askubuntu.com/questions/407897/why-i-cant-install-proprietary-drivers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 (edited) I came across that about half an hour ago. Nice to try but it I can't get into my desktop, how else can I do that? Ah, I see now. Edited July 29, 2014 by SueD 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Ah, I see now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 They were already uncommented. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 I accidentally hit the up button and this time the apt-get install -f worked this time. The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer reqiured: screen-resolution-extra libc6-i386 lib32gcc1 dkms Use apt-get autoremove to remove them. Just guessing this is my next move? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Same issue here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/413470/failed-to-install-nvidia-driver-on-ubuntu-13-10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 I accidentally hit the up button and this time the apt-get install -f worked this time. The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer reqiured: screen-resolution-extra libc6-i386 lib32gcc1 dkms Use apt-get autoremove to remove them. Just guessing this is my next move? Good deal!! Yeah, run sudo apt-get autoremove Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 This had better work because I looked at the source list for precise and have no clue what I'm looking for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 After doing apt-get update, should I try installing the nvidia driver again? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 After doing apt-get update, should I try installing the nvidia driver again? Yeah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 Dang it! I'm still getting that error about held broken packages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 Not sure but this may be my problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Perhaps upgrade to 14.04 LTS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 Yeah, looks like I have no choice. Ok, thanks for trying Josh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 Yeah, I thought we could figure it out until your last link.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 Quick question since it's been awhile since I did this but... Do I have to format my /home when installing this newer version? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted July 29, 2014 Share Posted July 29, 2014 No as long as it is on a separate partition, hence why it is a good idea to use separate partitions for / and /home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueD Posted July 29, 2014 Author Share Posted July 29, 2014 I always do. Thanks again Josh, muchly appreciated! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.