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I have the following problem:
I have(apparently) installed a faulty graphics driver and am caught in a login loop. I know how I can fix this issue, but I cannot login through any of the ttys that I can reach with the Ctrl+Alt+Fx combination, because the system keeps writing a ^@ character to all of the virtual terminals, making all my login attempts fail. I have, however, never had these characters printed into any terminal emulator.
Does anyone know what this character means and how I could fix my problem?
Marcus K
Posted 2018-01-19T14:40:59.540
Reputation: 1
^@generally indicates a null (0x0) character, so it looks as though you are receiving streams of nulls. Have you tried recovery mode? – AFH – 2018-01-19T15:03:46.660@AFH I did just now, and when I drop to the root shell I can access the system. Thanks! – Marcus K – 2018-01-19T15:10:06.713
Although I would still like to know why my system is streaming null chars to all of the virtual terminals – Marcus K – 2018-01-19T15:10:51.807
Didn't you say it yourself: wrong graphics driver? – AFH – 2018-01-19T15:25:40.420
No, the graphics driver was what sent me into the login loop. The stream of nulls just kept me from logging in through the ttys as I would normally do to resolve an issue like this. I still have no idea what prints these characters to stdout(which it still does even after resolving the login loop issue) – Marcus K – 2018-01-19T15:29:49.187
You'll need to look at your start-up files
/etc/profile,~/.bash_profile,~/.bash_login,~/.profileand any files they invoke. If you can startbash --noprofile, you can see if this makes a difference. Or do the nulls appear at the log-in prompt? – AFH – 2018-01-19T15:38:21.507They already appear at the tty login prompt. Also my login shell is zsh if that changes anything. – Marcus K – 2018-01-19T16:18:52.550
If it happens before you log in, then the log-in shell is not relevant, though the start-up files are of course different. – AFH – 2018-01-19T16:42:36.540