New to Debian 12, problems rebooting after updating driver

[Amaryllis]

Howdy. I’ve been trying to setup Debian for the first time as a new Linux user. Revently I tried to update my nvidia driver through the wiki, but I believe I messed up somewhere. It won’t boot and when I try to it freezes on a screen with two failed messages.

Code: Select all

[FAILED] Failed to start lightdm.service - Light Display Manager
[FAILED] Failed to start plymouth-quit.service - Terminate Plymouth Boot Screen.

After that it repeats a few other lines and it stops, basdically freezing at that point of the launch I believe? Mostly I’m wondering if I fucked up and bricked Debian or if there is a fix I can do. Any advice would be appreciated, and if I can provide any more info let me know.

[m1k3]

If you followed the instructions on the wiki it shouldn't have touched the display manager. Do you recall which part of the wiki page you followed?

[stevepusser]

Just restore your backup.

[m1k3]

Just restore your backup.

They're a newcomer to Linux and likely don't have a backup.

[stevepusser]

Call it a learning experience, then...

If a new user, hopefully has nothing invested to lose...

(resists urge to recommend MX Linux AHS for easy new hardware support)

[Amaryllis]

If you followed the instructions on the wiki it shouldn't have touched the display manager. Do you recall which part of the wiki page you followed?

It was the first part of the Nvidia driver update, although in hindsifht I should’ve noticed it was for experimental lol. If I need to restart from scratch its annoying but fine probably

[stevepusser]

Just restore your backup.

They're a newcomer to Linux and likely don't have a backup.

I forgot that only Linux has backup programs.

[eamanu]

Just restore your backup.

They're a newcomer to Linux and likely don't have a backup.

I've been a Linux user for around 10 years, and I usually don’t make backups. Perhaps now is the time to start?

[m1k3]

I've been a Linux user for around 10 years, and I usually don’t make backups. Perhaps now is the time to start?

Haha, hey - if you like living life on the edge or never make mistakes then more power to you. At the very least maybe use timeshift.

[Mort]

It's unlikely you bricked it. Are you able to log in to a teletype by hitting Ctrl+Alt+F1? There's a lot that can go wrong when updating the nvidia drivers. My suggestion would be to start with taking a look at the dynamic kernel module to make sure it was rebuilt successfully, and also the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to make sure there's no problems with that (assuming you're using X11 and not Wayland).