Fixing ubuntu glitch

David Ofor — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 09:54:37 +0000

🐞 Fixing the OpenIPMI Glitch on Ubuntu VM (VirtualBox)

🚨 The Problem

So I was on my own oh, just trying to use my Ubuntu happily oh when I booted it up and there was this weird glitch where my cursor turned into a black square and the desktop started flickering, creating a "double desktop" effect for a split second. It kept on happening repeatedly.

Initially I thought it was just a random glitch soo I just ignored it, but then I was like hold up...I'm supposed to be a Linux power-user👀 if I want my chances of landing a job or internship to be higher. So I decided to tackle my demons.

🛠 Debugging the Issue

...so I had a guess... I shutdown my vm and btw I'm using VBox cos why not. Then I increased the allocated video memory and restarted ubuntu

It gave me this false glimpse of hope when I logged in when it didnt glitch, but of course it can't be that easy with Linux😭, it got back to its glitching.

It was at that point I remembered I had learned about log files recently and I should try to inspect the logs and see what I find since I was really going into it blindly...
So I kindov figured out that it was a problem that occurred while the vm was booting soo I went all sherlock on it...

🔎Step 1: Inspecting the boot logs

cd /var/log
sudo cat boot.log

found this log about openipmi failing during boot,

I did a quick search on the openipmi service cos I didnt know what the heck it was, found out it's a background service for managing physical server hardware remotely using IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) and log story short(pun intended😉), it isn't needed for VMs and it could cause some conflicts, soo I proceeded to remove it.

Step 2: Solving the problem

So I removed it and it's dependencies and rebooted ubuntu

sudo apt purge openipmi ipmitool -y && sudo apt autoremove -y
sudo reboot

Conclusion

Every thing seems to be working perfectly since then, no black square cursors and glitchy desktops. Hopefully this fix lasts, fingers crossed🤞

Thanks for reading my first every blog post😭💕. Follow for more and feel free to connect with me😊. Signing out...