Ubuntu Server 14.04 does not boot properly with Nvidia cards

Affected Distributions

  • Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS

Description

After installing Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS, the OS appears to hang before reaching the login prompt on subsequent boot. It is actually just the display which fails to update. The root cause is lack of support for newer Nvidia cards in the open source Nouveau driver.

Solution

To work around this issue, perform the following steps when booting:

  1. Select Advanced options for Ubuntu from the GRUB menu
  2. Choose the boot entry with (recovery mode)
  3. From the recovery mode menu select "Resume normal boot"

The system should then boot to the login prompt.

If the system will be used in text mode, perform the following steps to work around the problem for future reboots:

  1. Open /etc/default/grub in an editor

  2. Add the nomodeset option to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT entry:

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset"

  3. Update the GRUB boot loader

    $ sudo update-grub

If the system will be used in GUI mode, perform the following steps:

  1. Install the graphical desktop packages

    $ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

  2. Follow the Nvidia binary driver installation instructions