Ubuntu 20.04.3 boots to black screen, no TTY available

[ebsf]

A fresh attempted install failed utterly, just as 20.04.1 failed two years ago. Has anyone been paying attention?

Ubuntu 20.04.3 burned just now to a USB stick and attempted to be installed.

The first fail was that the stick booted to a couple of impenetrable boot-time messages and hung. Really. I'm not making this up. It didn't just open the installer, as it should.

The second fail was having just to guess that rebooting and trying another GRUB menu option might work and give that a try. Really. I'm not making this up, either. The installer was entirely incapable of providing any direction

The third failure was that the installer was incapable of detecting the video configuration and proceeding accordingly. This is 20.04.3, the third attempt at getting this right, and it still fails.

The fourth fail was an error message insisting on a designation of where root should be, even after the destination partition already had been specified.

The fifth failure was that no obvious means existed to satisfy the installer about the root specification, which of course already had been made by specifying the destination partition. All one could do was to see whether a context menu existed for any object on the screen that might possibly drill down through a few layers to something approximating what the content of the error message suggested.

The sixth failure was that no GRUB menu appeared during boot, notwithstanding that the EFI system partition had clearly been identified in the installer.

The seventh failure was that the machine booted only to a black screen with a non-blinking _ midway toward the upper left. No login screen/display manager. No GUI at all. Just this little _.

The eighth failure was that Ctrl-alt-f2, ctrl-alt-f5-f12 have no effect. No TTY is available. There is no way whatsoever to interact with the system.

Expected behavior: The software would install and the computer would work.

Actual behavior: The installer bricked my workstation.

Obviously, no debug information is available BECAUSE THE SOFTWARE FAILED. This post is being made from a borrowed Windows laptop.

Any thoughts about how to get a working system would be appreciated. I am not optimistic about the prospects for 22.04.

[Alex Murray (alexmurray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks for the bug report. Please be careful to report only one issue per bug report.

When you have trouble with the USB not booting, that's usually a bad copy of the ISO on the USB or a slightly faulty thumb drive. Very common. Always have a different thumb drive handy to try.

I suggest the best place to start is with Ubuntu 22.04 (http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/). If you have trouble with that then we would like to know ASAP.

If you want to stick with 20.04 instead then please try 20.04.4 (https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop) and choose a single issue to discuss, presumably the first issue you face.