Ubuntu 12.04 login screen flickers. “Could not write bytes: broken pipes”

Posted by Brayn on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Brayn
Published on 2012-06-20T09:33:29Z Indexed on 2012/10/09 3:51 UTC
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12.04

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64-bit

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boot-failure

I use Ubuntu 12.04 x64 with a dual-boot setup.

Yesterday it worked fine but this morning when I attempted to boot it gets to the login screen and then it just flickers, alternating between the login screen and the console showing boot items (mainly Apache, the last one being "Battery status" although it's a desktop) all with [OK] status. The only error that I can see is: "Could not write bytes: broken pipes" on top of the screen.

The only things I can think of that could cause this are:

This morning I had a removable hdd plugged in during boot time, which I usually don't have
Yesterday I've installed Dwarven Fortress that requires some x32 libraries so I've installed ia32 using synaptic. As far as I know this shouldn't brake the system but I didn't reboot yesterday so I can't be sure.

I've tried booting in recovery mode and tried running the utils there but still no luck.

I've ran out of ideas. Thanks.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that all partitions have plenty of free space

EDIT2: In the end I just reinstalled Ubuntu as time was of the essence.

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