Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

Tiomaidh · 2010-12-23 03:28:46

Hello,

I've been trying to get dual monitors working on my Thinkpad T40 with an ATI Radeon Mobility 9000. I was using the default driver, and grandr had grayed out the "extend" option--I was stuck on "clone". Someone recommended trying the fglrx driver, so I installed it and rebooted. And was met with about 80% of my desktop wallpaper that had some random corruption. I tried fiddling around and eventually it changed to a super-corrupted, tiled version of the "Crunchbang Linux" splash screen. I believe this happened when I tried to switch to tty1.

"Well," says I, "I guess this driver is a major flop. I need to remove it. I can't get access to tty1-6, so...oh! Recovery mode!" So I boot into recovery mode, and eagerly select the option to get a root shell. It asks for a root password. I know that Ubuntu/#! doesn't have a root account by default, and I didn't make one myself. So...I tried my normal password (used with sudo), root, ubuntu, etc. And nothing works.

I Googled around, and everyone seems to think that I should just get a root shell without a password prompt.

So... a) Am I correct in thinking that if I remove the flgrx driver, everything will go back to normal? b) How do I go about accessing a shell prompt from which to do that? c) Bonus points: How am I supposed to get dual monitors working properly? I can talk about what I've tried in greater detail, but it should wait until the rest of the system is working properly.

I don't know how helpful it is, but I also have Statler installed, which I presume is working. I wasn't sure what to do with it though.

Edit:

[Dang, I already typed this in once...and then my security token expired when I tried to preview it...and it all got erased. Take two. I might be more terse. Sorry.]

I got a root shell by appending init=/bin/bash to the GRUB boot line.

root@(none):/# aptitude remove fglrx-amdccle fglrx-kernel-source fglrx-modaliases xorg-driver-fglrx
#Aptitude complains about not having a lock on a config file. I'd reproduce it, except I can't scroll up, and I can't do it again since trying to exit broke things even more
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 68.7MB will be freed
Do you want t ocontinue? [Y/n/?] y
[ number] aptitude[810]: segfault at 0 ip b7102611 sp bfaeacfc error 4 in libc-2.9.so[another long number in hex]
Segmentation fault
root@(none):/# passwd
# I type in a password, you know the drill
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
passwd: password unchanged
root@(none):/# logout #With the hopes of logging in as myself
bash: logout: not login shell: use `exit'
root # exit
exit
[number] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
[number] Dumping ftrace buffer:
[number]     (ftrace buffer empty)
#blinking cursor
#Hung system--can't type, can't do anything
#Hard boot

(And by [number], I mean, you know, a series of digits, not "[number]" itself.)

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Tiomaidh (2010-12-23 03:49:55)

phlogisto · 2010-12-23 10:51:08

Login to your account (assuming you're a superuser) and set a root password first this way:

sudo passwd root

and after that you will be able to login as root. Hope that helps.

Last edited by phlogisto (2010-12-23 10:51:22)

Unia · 2010-12-23 11:13:16

To uninstall the flgrx driver, run this

/usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

Afterwards, reboot. You should be good to go from there.

Tiomaidh · 2010-12-23 13:48:03

phlogisto wrote:

Login to your account (assuming you're a superuser)

How? As I said, when I use the shell provided by appending "init=/bin/bash" to the boot line in GRUB, passwd throws an "Authentication token manipulation error".

For what it's worth, I can't use sudo either:

root@(none):/# sudo passwd root
sudo: unable to resolve host (none)
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
passwd: password unchanged.

Unia wrote:

To uninstall the flgrx driver, run this
/usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

The only thing in the ati directory is a folder called amdcccle.

In that folder, there's 21 files that appear to be for languages. Here's the first few:

amdcccle_cs.qm
amdcccle_da_DK.qm
amdcccle_de.qm
amdcccle_el_GR.qm
(etc. They all match this pattern: amdcccle_*.qm)

Tiomaidh · 2010-12-23 14:39:58

Update:

I believe that I'm having trouble with aptitude and passwd since the filesystem is mounted as read-only when I do the "init=/bin/bash" trick.

snowpine · 2010-12-23 14:47:47

Choosing "Recovery Mode" from GRUB on a default install of CrunchBang Statler should give you a root terminal, no password or special secret codes necessary.

Unia · 2010-12-23 14:49:20

How exactly did you install the driver?

Tiomaidh · 2010-12-23 14:51:49

Unia wrote:

How exactly did you install the driver?

I installed xorg-driver-fglrx and its dependencies with aptitude.

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2010-12-23 03:28:46

Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

#2 2010-12-23 10:51:08

Re: Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

#3 2010-12-23 11:13:16

Re: Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

#4 2010-12-23 13:48:03

Re: Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

#5 2010-12-23 14:39:58

Re: Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

#6 2010-12-23 14:47:47

Re: Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

#7 2010-12-23 14:49:20

Re: Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

#8 2010-12-23 14:51:49

Re: Broke X/Can't enter recovery mode without a(non-existent)root password

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