I have an old (10+years) laptop, a Dell Inspirion (64 bit). I have beein using Fedora since Fedora 27 or so. Occasionally, it will never complete a login, the system just sitting there after the password is accepted, and never presents the menu to start applications. With Feodra 31 (upgrade from 30), this problem has gotten much worse, only completing the login about one out of five. I have searched the logs for errors that would give me a hint as to what has gone wrong, but I have not been able to determine what is keeping the system from completing the login. Any ideas on what to look for in the log. I have compared logs from Fedora 31 good login to incomplete as well as compared logs from Fedora 30 and 31. Thanks for any help.
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Out of curiosity. What are the specs on this machine?
From /proc/cpuinfo
rocessor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core™2 Duo CPU T5750 @ 2.00GHz
stepping : 13
microcode : 0xa4
cpu MHz : 1994.947
cache size : 2048 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_ts
c arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl
est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm pti dtherm
bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds
swapgs itlb_multihit
bogomips : 3989.89
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
What about GPU and RAM?
MemTotal: 4028888 kB
MemFree: 1908864 kB
MemAvailable: 2511700 kB
Buffers: 78484 kB
Cached: 693540 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 1224592 kB
Inactive: 390800 kB
Active(anon): 844472 kB
Inactive(anon): 2544 kB
Active(file): 380120 kB
Inactive(file): 388256 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 4169724 kB
SwapFree: 4169724 kB
Dirty: 36 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 843400 kB
Mapped: 254248 kB
Shmem: 3652 kB
KReclaimable: 75108 kB
Slab: 177944 kB
SReclaimable: 75108 kB
SUnreclaim: 102836 kB
KernelStack: 8000 kB
PageTables: 16564 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 6184168 kB
Committed_AS: 4096472 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed: 21492 kB
VmallocChunk: 0 kB
Percpu: 1832 kB
HardwareCorrupted: 0 kB
AnonHugePages: 0 kB
ShmemHugePages: 0 kB
hmemPmdMapped: 0 kB
CmaTotal: 0 kB
CmaFree: 0 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
Hugetlb: 0 kB
DirectMap4k: 399816 kB
DirectMap2M: 3792896 kB
VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G86M [GeForce 8400M GS] (rev a1)
What are you using for graphics drivers? Failed logins are a common symptom after upgrading the Nvidia binary video drivers (which aren’t standard in Fedora, they have to be installed from a third-party repository) at the same time a new kennel is installed, since the kennel module has to be built and installed for each kennel separately, and sometimes things happen out of order and everything isn’t configured correctly before the system reboots.
Under normal circumstances when that happens, everything fixes itself during the next startup, so the solution is to simply reboot one more time to get everything loaded correctly.
Obviously that’s not the problem you’re experiencing, but the symptom does point to a possible issue with your video drivers, which can manifest exactly that way. Especially since the 8400 is a very old card at this point, and is only supported by one of the legacy Nvidia driver releases, not the current ones.
If you haven’t installed the Nvidia drivers, then you’ll be using the open-source nouveau driver (included with Fedora)… and it’s still possible there’s some issue with its 8400 support.
Running sudo dmesg from a terminal, or sudo journalctl -b shortly after boot, will show you the system logs, any driver errors should show up in red and be pretty obvious. (Though there may be other red messages as well.)
(Note: With the journalctl command you’ll be starting from the beginning of the current boot, driver messages would be pretty early but you’ll have to scroll down a few hundred lines. If you’re doing this from a successful login, sudo journalctl -b -1 will show the previous boot’s logs, -b -2 for the one before that, etc…)
Dear @drhitzs
I am also affectionate with old systems. As much as I enjoy using Fedora on older equipment, there are some areas where I agree. In some cases, insufficient libraries or conflicts and compatibility parts may fail during the upgrade installation.
Solution If you have a complicated or time-consuming task, you may need to consider the new installation with a new Hard Disk. In addition, if the system has been in use for a long time, it is recommended that the storage device be up to date, as there may be a system failure due to a disk problem.
Have a nice day. fighting!
I have been searching the logs for failures etc. One graphics driver error was reported (1770476) under Fedora 30 by me. No comments have been made by anyone in support.
Looking through the logs, I have not found anything that jumps out as an error. I suspect that it is a timing error that has been with me for a very long time, but has gotten a lot worse in Fedora 31. Thanks for your comments. There have not been any errors, crashes, etc. in the logs that do not show up in the good login logs. I suspect that it is some kind of timing error, something does not complete soon enough for its user. I have not been able to chase that down. Any hints would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again.
I am using the Fedora supplied drivers. There usually not any crashes (stack traces etc.) in the logs. This problem has been around for me since Fedora 28, but it has gotten increasingly worse. I suspect that it is some kind of timing error where some piece of code is not completing before it is needed, and the client and server are waiting on each other. Any hints on how to determine this would be greatly appreciated. My background has been in IBM mainframes, but very little in Unix or Linux systems. Thanks for any help.