Hi everyone!
I state I’m new in Linux world and there are a lot of basilar things I didn’t learn yet, so sorry for my ignorance. Moreover I’m Italian, so sorry again for the bad English
Yesterday I installed Fedora 30 on my Asus VivoBook S14 with Intel Core i7-8565U CPU, Intel HD Graphics (Whiskey Lake), 8GB RAM and 1,0 TB HDD.
Once installed, I launched the command sudo dnf upgrade --refresh. It worked a couple of hours, apparently with success, then I restarted my PC. So it turned off, then the screen became black, than the “ASUS” logo came out, as usual, but then the OS never started. So I forced the turn off and after few seconds I restarted again. In that case “ASUS” came out and then appeared the menu with all the kernels, as in the picture:
I tried the first one (5.1.12-300) and the screen stayed black.
The second one (5.0.9-301) instead still work correctly.
Every time I try to turn on the pc I have to do it: i turn on, it gets stuck, I force the turn off, I turn on again, that menu appears and I select the 5.0.9-301.
The last week I already tried to install Fedora, but I had the same probem: I installed Fedora, then upgraded and the new kernel (in this case 5.1.7-300) got stuck so I had to return every time in 5.0.9-301. A friend suggested me to reinstall the OS so I tried, but the problem still remains.
So, my questions are:
Can I (and how) de-stuck the upgraded kernel?
If I can’t, can I (and how) set the 5.0.9 as the default kernel, so I don’t have to force the turn off every time?
Alternatively is possible (and how) to set something in way to make the menu appear whenever I turn on the PC?
But pay attention! Check if the dnf transaction doesn’t want to remove the working kernel! In such case, stop the update (say no when asked to continue) and consider to raise the installonly_limit option in /etc/dnf/dnf.conf: more info in this other post.
You can use grubby.
To get the currently default kernel that will be loaded on boot:
You can let the menu appear by keeping SHIFT key pressed during the boot (at the early stages, just after the BIOS messages). Or you can permanently unhide the grub menu issuing this command from the Fedora terminal:
Hello @vaffer, and sorry you are having this inconvenience. To answer your question about the default kernel that boots, I’ll just CP something from the Administrators Guide…
`
Listing the Default Kernel
To find out the file name of the default kernel, enter a command as follows:
You likely will find your (?broken?) kernel is index 0 and the one you can boot (the previous one) is index 1. In any case I see you have an Intel Graphics chip, and I don’t think that is the issue. There is also a magazine article about the dracut shell that is probably where you find yourself in the kernel that doesn’t complete bootup. It is here. If you boot into the working kernel, there is a lot you can do to get the new one working, and it starts with grubby with grubby --info=ALL (add sudo at front if your PC is EFI, which it very likely is). That will list all the kernels then merely use grubby --set-default /boot/your kernel choice. I hope this helps you solve this issue.
Thanks both, now I see the GRUB everytime I turn on, so at least is easier.
I removed the ‘broken’ kernel, so I don’t risk to lost the working one doing the new update. I’ll make you know very soon, but in every case I dubit the problem will be resolved in this way. The last week I installed, upgraded and the 5.7.1-300 didn’t work, then upgraded again and 5.1.12-300 didn’t work, so reinstalled all, upgraded again and still not working. I think it’s impossible that depends on something I did wrong (the last time I only upgraded) , but maybe on something depending by the hardware (drivers?).
Anyway I’m going to upgrade again to 5.1.15, let’s see what happens.
Just installed 5.1.15-300 but nothing changed: I did the reboot, selected 5.1.15 from the grub (that now is always shown) and then black screen forever, so I had to force the shut down.
Another thing you can do to have a better view of what it is happening, it is to remove quiet and see the boot messages.
You can do that hitting ESC while Fedora is loading. Or you can remove from the kernel options, editing the grub menu entry at runtime, or permanently by issuing this command from the Terminal (you can re add them later):
And you can inspect the logs
This command show you the previous boot logs (supposing that now you booted whit the working kernel, while the previous boot was the unsuccessful one).
journalctl -b -1
Maybe, supposing that the problem is related to GDM, try to limit the logs to it
I removed quiet and discovered that when I select the 5.0.9-301 it comes out the long list of green [OK] on the left and white descriptions on the right (so everithing ok), while if I select the 5.1.12-300 the message is: " EFI stub: UEFI Secure Boot is enabled
_"
and then it gets stuck.
About the log, them start from the boot in 5.0.9, there is no trace about the previous boot.
Interesting.
So, booting whit a kernel other than 5.0.9, the boot process not even start. It stops right with this “EFI stub” message, I understand you correctly?
The first time I did sudo dnf update --refresh, the second time (today) I used sudo dnf update --enablerepo=updates-testing kernel as you suggested in the first reply.
To be honest it goes completely out of my ability to understand and adapt it to my situation. Can you translate in a more basic sequence of things I should do?
Now this option is passed only to 5.1.15-300 I’m not pretty sure how to automatically add this argument to the future kernels.
Maybe issuing the grubby command with --update-kernel=ALL it will modify the current ones, as well as the future ones. BTW it will also affect the working 5.0.9
In any case, you can also modify kernel arguments when the grub menu appears (in this case they will not be persistent).
At this point I would open a bug: how to file a bug. Specifying the computer model, and the fact that whit 5.0.9 it works, while with 5.1.7, 5.1.15 and so on (try to be more precise than me with the version numbers) it doesn’t work, it stay stuck at EFI stub: UEFI Secure Boot is enabled. And what is the workaround. I can’t find a similar bug on bugzilla; however if someone else already reported such issue, your bug will be marked as duplicate: it matters little.
There is another thing I would like to try, if you want.
Revert to the previous status:
Thank you all for your help, I have been researching/fighting this for almost 3 weeks now. I installed fedora on my Vivobook and have experienced the exact same issues. The grubby fix resolved this for me and I will continue to watch the bug. I just wanted to say thanks for the help!
