Lỗi ubuntu the system is running in low-graphics mode intel

I removed all Unity stuff when I was switching from Unity to XFCE, including the Unity greeter for Lightdm. As expected, I've got a problem with lightdm which told me that "The system is running in low-graphics mode", so I was not be able to log in to my computer. If you encounter same problem with me, today I'd like to share my experience to solve this problem.

Please make sure you have installed one of available lightdm greeters. As far as I know, there are many greeters available: unity-greeter, lightdm-gtk-greeter, lightdm-kde-greeter, and lightdm-webkit-greeter. Please check them on repository!

In this post, I use lightdm-gtk-greeter because I want to use XFCE as desktop manager. Once the greeter is installed, open "/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf" file with your "available" text editor - terminal based text editor: nano, vim, etc. That's because you can't log in to your computer - and set the value of "greeter-session" to the choosen lightdm greeter (in this example: lightdm-gtk-greeter).

This picture is for illustration only. In reality, you can't use graphical text editor when you can't log in! Please use any available terminal based text editor such as nano, vim, etc!

You're done, please cross your fingers and restart the computer to see the result of your effort. Good luck!

So, after moving from Mac to Windows to Linux, I went on a crusade to find the perfect Linux Desktop Environment. I originally installed Ubuntu 15.04 and quickly wondered off to Cinnamon, tried, Gnome 2 and 3, then XFCE and tried Tiling Managers like AwesomeWM and i3.

Without starting a desktop environment flame-war, I just say that I decided on one. Since I’m a bit OCD on having a clean system, I started to remove the other desktop environments. However, somehow during the whole removal process, something happened because the next time I started my machine, the beautiful Dell XPS13, I was meet with the error:

The system is running in low-graphics mode

Obviously, my graphic driver got uninstalled, right? Naturally, I started to re-install all Dell graphic drivers (Intel) and rebooted. Unfortunately, I was meet with the same error message again. I then looked further into the error message which tells me that the Xorg.conf file has an issue.

Now, not being an expert on this matter, I started searching for anyone with the same issue. This is when I found this thread on askubuntu. “Solutions” in this thread range from a complete re-install, to booting up in rescue mode and doing something to login manager issues. In my case, the issue was the Lighdm login manager, however, none of the solutions posted worked. Even after re-installing Lightdm, configuring it and countless reboots.

In the end, it was an issue that the Lightdm manager did not re-create (or link) to a proper configuration file. In short, I created the file /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf with the content:

This is an attempt to create a canonical question that covers all instances of "low-graphics mode" error that occurs to a user, including but not limited to installation of wrong drivers, incorrect or invalid lightdm greeters, low disk space, incorrect installation of graphics card like ATI and Nvidia, incorrect configuration of xorg.conf file while setting up multiple monitors among others.

If you are experiencing the "low-graphics mode" error when trying to login but none of the following answers work for you, please do ask a new question and then update the answers of this canonical question as and when your new question gets answered.

When I try to boot into my computer, I am getting this error:

The system is running in low-graphics mode Your screen, graphics cards, and input device settings could not be detected correctly. You will need to configure these yourself.

How do I fix the failsafe X mode and login into my computer?

Answer index:

• The greeter is invalid

8

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 on a Toshiba Portege R100. I got this error after the first bootup after install. After downloading and updating the graphics driver (Trident Cyberblade), what worked for me was creating a driver-specific .conf file as described in this Arch-Linux wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Trident.

1

I had the “The system is running in low-graphics mode” error after trying to upgrade my Acer Aspire 4810T with Intel GM45 Express Chipset graphics from a 64bit 13.04 to a 64bit 13.10.

I had less than 2 gigabytes of free disk space when I started the upgrade. I faced first anomalies already before the reboot. The upgrade window showing the progress showed that everything has been downloaded and installed but it never closed. Couldn't close it even manually.

Then, after reboot, I got the “The system is running in low-graphics mode” error window.

I tried to solve the problem as proposed above by Luis Alvarado, user41938, community wiki, Azul Mascara and David M. Sousa.

My guess is that my problem was related to tiny disk space as hinted by Azul Mascara. But just freeing disk space and even allocating more by repartitioning didn't help.

After struggling more than enough with the problem I decided to download the 13.10 64bit and make a bootable USB stick with it. I booted the laptop with the USB stick and selected the installation on top of the old 13.10 (non-functioning) system that the installer recognized. This fixed my problem.

First, type the following commands:

$ lspci | grep -i VGA
$ lspci | grep -i amd

For me (HP pavilion 15n003tx, Saucy), the outputs were:

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd
0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

Since the AMD device doesn't come as output in the first command, even if you install amd drivers, you'll probably end up with the following error in /var/log/Xorg.0.log:

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

Hence, I followed the steps:

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ cp /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf.failsafe /etc/xorg.conf

The contents of xorg.conf.failsafe are:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Configured Video Device"
    Driver      "fbdev"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "Configured Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Default Screen"
    Monitor     "Configured Monitor"
    Device      "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

I fixed this problem by removing

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd
0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

2 manually.

You can also try deleting the file

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd
0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

3 and rebooting.

answered Sep 29, 2013 at 0:25

I have the same problem (The system is running in low-graphics mode) when I reboot the system connected to an Oculus Rift (1080x1920 monitor). If I reboot the machine and connect a monitor of (1920x1080 resolution) it works ok.

The machine has Ubuntu 14.04 and Nvidia 970, driver 346 and kernel 3.15. With the default lightdm configuration (autologin activated).

The problem started suddenly, without making major changes in Ubuntu configuration.

I had the same issue in another machine with nvidia 970, same version of Ubuntu / different kernel. On this machine the problem happened when changing from autologin to login with user/pw in lightm and it was solved rebooting the machine with a 1920x1080 monitor connected and enabling autologin again.

For me this problem occurred after upgrading from "Ubuntu 12.04 LTS" plus TDE to "Ubuntu 14.04 LTS" plus TDE. TDE is the trinity desktop environment (trinitydesktop.org). The cause of the error was that

1. test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd 0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

   4 pointed to

   test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd 0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

   5 although during the upgrade I told it to use

   test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd 0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

   6 as default.
2. lightdm was broken (and I don't care why).

The fix was to run

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd
0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

7 and to choose

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd
0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

6 as my default. A few days later the problem came back and again

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd
0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

4 pointed to lightdm, don't know why.

This one worked for me using ubuntu 13.10, my ubuntu stopped working after installing

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

0.

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-304 nvidia-current nvidia-libopencl1-304 nvidia-settings 

Just purge all the nvidia-* and restart

I am not a geek just a layman don't know the reason why it works.

Different users solved their in different ways (since the causes of the problem were different for different people). I am describing what caused the problem in my desktop and how did I solve it.

WARNING: My method will work on your computer only if the cause of the problem is the same. Nevertheless read my reply to develop a general understanding.

Cause of the problem:

I made some changes to the file

/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

After I rebooted I encountered the 'system-is-running-in-low-graphics-mode' error. Clearly the changes made to the above 'lightdm.conf' file needed to be undone.

How did I solve it:

1. When the error message appears, press Ctrl+Alt+F1, then login using your ubuntu username and password.
2. Go to the directory /etc/lightdm/ (cd /etc/lightdm/). Open the above file in vim using

   [ 12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

   1. Vim opens the file in the terminal itself.
3. Undo the changes that caused the problem. In my case I removed a line that I had added (which caused the problem). Save and quit vim. Following this step requires you to know how to use vim editor to edit files. If you are unfamiliar with vim watch tutorials on how to open a file, edit a file, save and quit a file in vim.
4. Reboot the computer. The problem is gone!

PS: I undid the change that caused the error. Your cause of error could be completely different from mine. So, blindly following my answer definitely won't help. On the other hand it may damage your computer.

I got this error after upgrading from 14.04 to 15.10 (and then to 16.04). For some reason the

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

2 directory was missing.

To fix the issue, first, create the directory:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/lightdm
sudo chown -R lightdm:lightdm /var/lib/lightdm
sudo chmod 0750 /var/lib/lightdm

Then create the

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

3 file:

sudo touch /var/lib/lightdm/.Xauthority
sudo chown lightdm:lightdm /var/lib/lightdm/.Xauthority

More details:

Most of the solutions revolve around ATI or NVidia drivers, but I just have an Intel integrated graphics chip, so that wasn't the issue.

I discovered the actual problem by looking at the greeter log:

$ sudo cat /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log
Error writing X authority: Failed to open X authority /var/lib/lightdm/.Xauthority: No such file or directory

Indeed, the

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

2 was absent. Just creating the empty directory (as recommended in another question's answer) resulted in the same error, but after creating the

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

3 file, the system booted fine

Edit: Just found this question that has two answers: one recommending creating the directory, the other recommending creating the file. As I said, I needed to do both.

I face this error almost 100 times.

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd
0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

0

I started seeing this error after upgrading to Ubuntu 17.10.

From a text console, I changed

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

6 in

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

7 to

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

8 so I could see the boot messages and ran

[    12.873] (II) fglrx(0): Invalid ATI BIOS from int10, the adapter is not VGA-enabled

9.

Upon reboot I saw that it was the "GNOME display manager" that had failed. Hey, wasn't I using LightDM? After running

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ cp /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf.failsafe /etc/xorg.conf

0 to switch back from GDM3 to LightDM, it worked fine.

I had the same problem on a 16.04 box with Intel integrated graphics this morning and found my way here. What worked for me:

When presented with the low-graphics-mode message at boot and unable to click "OK", I pressed Ctrl + Alt + F1 to bring up the terminal (in glorious full-screen text mode), and logged in.

I was going to follow the steps to reinstall the whole desktop, but then I noticed there were updates available.

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ cp /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf.failsafe /etc/xorg.conf

1 revealed that kernel updates were among them, and

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ cp /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf.failsafe /etc/xorg.conf

2 installed the updates. Then

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ cp /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf.failsafe /etc/xorg.conf

3 to reboot.

And the problem went away. Probably some kind of bug with a previous version of the kernel. The recent change that I made that may have brought this on was installing a larger VGA monitor with a native resolution of 1680 x 1050. Anyway, everything seems to be fine now.

The only solution that worked for me is to switch lightdm to gdm:

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ lspci | grep -i amd
0a:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M]

1

Reconfigure your display manager

Run

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ cp /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf.failsafe /etc/xorg.conf

4

replacing

test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ sudo apt-get purge fglrx*
test@HP-Pavilion-15:/etc/X11$ cp /etc/Xorg/xorg.conf.failsafe /etc/xorg.conf

5 with you display manager (https://wiki.debian.org/DisplayManager), and choose one from the list that will be shown.

Yet another cause -- memory upgrade!

I have system with both Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows 10 installed. Both 64-bit, of course. It had been working just fine (well fine-ish) with only 8 GB of RAM installed. I decided to upgrade it to 32 GB (the max supported by the motherboard). After installing the new RAM, of course I booted memtest86 and tested the new memory very thoroughly: no errors after more than 24 hours of running the test. I booted Windows and it showed 32 GB of memory and had no issues. I booted into Ubuntu and got the "system is running in low graphics mode".

Nothing had changed except for the additional memory!

Any number of articles on the web here at askubuntu and elsewhere claim that if you have 64-bit kernels, no settings changes should be necessary when you upgrade memory; it should just work.

It was not a problem of having too-small a swap partition for the larger memory. That was one of the first things I checked. When the OS was installed a 90 GB swap partition had been created, which is more than enough.

After wasting about a day checking various things, what finally worked for me was to:

• reboot into recovery mode
• rerun the "mkswap" utility to re-initialize the swap partition.
• reboot

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq for details on how much swap space is needed and how to use the mkswap utility.

I can only guess that when it saw the expanded memory, the kernel decided that the page size of the swap file should have a new value, and that did not match whatever whatever the page size was when the swp partition was initialized. So then virtual memory failed to enable, and somehow that led to a cascade of failures.