[Not] Solving "The system is running in low graphic mode" on boot...

Followed the directions at http://askubuntu.com/questions/141606/how-to-fix-the-system-is-running-in-low-graphics-mode-error:

1. Used Control-Alt-F1 to get an alternate terminal and log in.
2. sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
3. sudo reboot

Update: Well, this didn't work. Next time I booted, I had the same problem...

Ubuntu 11.10 install: Hanging at "Checking Battery Status"

I started by doing an upgrade of my 10.04 system to 11.10, but ran into the dreaded hang on boot at "Checking for battery Status".

Turns out this has nothing to do with a battery (mine is a desktop system), this is just where boot hangs if you have video driver problems.

After trying many, many, many, many, many, many, things, including a fresh install, here's what finally got it working for me...

It was the combination of this post:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install --reinstall gdm xorg

And this post:

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-* 
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-'uname -r' 
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current   
sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo apt-get update
echo options nouveau modeset=0 | sudo tee --append /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau-kms.conf
echo RUN+="/sbin/modprobe nvidia" | sudo tee --append /etc/udev/rules.d/90-modprobe.rules
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo reboot

What I actually ended up doing was the gdm and xorg reinstall from the first post, then the second post and then the first post again.

I suspect I could have just done second post followed by first post, but haven't done a clear re-install to try it.

USB drives not automounting

I noticed that after upgrading my laptop to Ubuntu 10.10, USB drives weren't automounting.

My first clue was in this comment, I didn't have the usb_storage kernel module loaded:

# lsmod | grep usb
usbhid                 36882  0 
hid                    67742  1 usbhid

So I loaded the usb_storage module:

# modprobe usb_storage
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
# lsmod | grep usb
usb_storage            40172  1 
usbhid                 36882  0 
hid                    67742  1 usbhid

And at this point USB drives mounted just fine. To make it permanent, I followed the directions in this post, added "usb_storage" to /etc/modules and rebooted. USB automounting working fine now.