Major problems installing Ubuntu 18.10 on Cosmos VII

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ijdickinson

New member
I'm trying to install Ubuntu 18.10 on a 15.6" Cosmos VII with the NVidia GTX 1050 graphics card, and having major problems. Every other Ubuntu installation I've done in the past has gone smoothly, this is the first one that I've really run into a wall on.

* The first problem was that the boot disk hangs while either trying to "Try Ubuntu" or "Install Ubuntu". Googling suggests that this is due to graphics driver issues, and to add "nomodeset" to the grub boot command. This does indeed stop it hanging, but:

* the second problem is that with nomodeset on grub, the aspect ratio of the installer is out-of-whack, and some of the dialog boxes are off screen. It's kind-of OK because I can tab to the "ok" button to proceed through the installation, but then:

* having completed the installer, and booted to the Ubuntu login menu, when I login I get the "black screen of death" - a mouse pointer, but then everything freezes up. Again, googling suggests graphics driver issues, but the suggested work around is to install the nvidia drivers and I can't get a console up with ctl-alt-F2, even from the boot screen

* I also can't get the Grub boot menu to appear. The suggested route, hitting shift after the BIOS boot, doens't work. Hitting ESC *does* get the grub command line interface, but I'm not sure what I need to do from there to get a text-mode boot.

So, a bit of a litany of woe! Very happy to receive any suggestions!
Thanks,
Ian
 
I

ijdickinson

New member
All sorted.

There were a couple of elements to the solution:

* turn off secure-boot in BIOS - it can prevent some of the signed NVidia drivers from running, apparently
* start from Ubuntu 18.04.01, which has been out for a while. I was trying to use the latest release, 18.10, which has only been out for a few days. 18.04 is a "long-term support" (LTS) release, and seems to be a bit less bleeding-edge
* disable any attempt to use the nvidia advanced modes to begin with, by using Grub to add the "nomodeset" flag to the Linux kernel I was booting into
* once I had a stable desktop, install the latest NVidia drivers (nvidia-driver-410)

Now that that's all done, my laptop is running Ubuntu very nicely.
 
Oussebon

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
great to hear it's all sorted and thanks for posting up the steps needed to troubleshoot as it can help others :)
 
B

BigMackCam

Member
ijdickinson said:
All sorted.

There were a couple of elements to the solution:

* turn off secure-boot in BIOS - it can prevent some of the signed NVidia drivers from running, apparently
* start from Ubuntu 18.04.01, which has been out for a while. I was trying to use the latest release, 18.10, which has only been out for a few days. 18.04 is a "long-term support" (LTS) release, and seems to be a bit less bleeding-edge
* disable any attempt to use the nvidia advanced modes to begin with, by using Grub to add the "nomodeset" flag to the Linux kernel I was booting into
* once I had a stable desktop, install the latest NVidia drivers (nvidia-driver-410)

Now that that's all done, my laptop is running Ubuntu very nicely.
Click to expand...

Congratulations on getting it all running!

Out of interest, are you able to control screen brightness using the keyboard?
 
V

valbuc

Member
ijdickinson said:
All sorted.

There were a couple of elements to the solution:

* turn off secure-boot in BIOS - it can prevent some of the signed NVidia drivers from running, apparently
* start from Ubuntu 18.04.01, which has been out for a while. I was trying to use the latest release, 18.10, which has only been out for a few days. 18.04 is a "long-term support" (LTS) release, and seems to be a bit less bleeding-edge
* disable any attempt to use the nvidia advanced modes to begin with, by using Grub to add the "nomodeset" flag to the Linux kernel I was booting into
* once I had a stable desktop, install the latest NVidia drivers (nvidia-driver-410)

Now that that's all done, my laptop is running Ubuntu very nicely.
Click to expand...

Nice thanks for your update, I had the exact same problems on my Fusion II and these worked for me.

Have you got your trackpad working? That's my only problem now
 
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