Kernel 6.4.x does not boot or shutdown consistently - AMD Ryzen 7900X (AM5)

Problem

I have been experiencing issues with kernels newer than 6.3.8. Since Fedora is now delivering 6.4.x kernels, I manually choose updates to install, and am preventing all kernel updates to my system.

I’ve seen other topics on boot problems - and ThinkPad laptops are using Intel processors, if I remember correctly, so that may not be applicable.

The 6.4.x kernels do not shut down correctly - this actually started with the 6.3.x kernels greater than 6.3.8. My system appears to shut down, but then starts up again. I configured my Grub menu for no timeout, so I will often come into my computer room and find the computer on (and the room unbearably warm) after what I thought was a successful shutdown. (I do NOT have any ACPI wakeup conditions enabled.)

I’ve experienced two additional issues with 6.4.x kernels - currently, I have 6.4.6 as a bootable option besides 6.3.8:

  • I cannot enable Secure Boot in the computer BIOS. At all. The 6.4.x kernels will not boot correctly, usually either hanging the machine or continually rebooting the machine.
  • Even disabling Secure Boot is no guarantee ot starting. The kernels will not consistently boot. Sometimes, removing the “QUIET” command will work. Other times, even doing this will not work, and the system will continually reboot.

This system: ASRock X670E Taichi, AMD Ryzen 7900X AM5, 32GB DDR5, PCIE5.0 (no cards installed), 2TB TeamGroup SSD, 1TB Hitachi HDD. I am using the embedded Radeon graphics, no plugin card. I have updated the BIOS three times this year, as the AM5 is a relatively new platform.

I have not yet updated my AM4 system to the latest kernels, and will likely do that soon.

Cause

Not yet known.

Related Issues

Bugzilla report: #NNNN

Workarounds

None yet.

I’m moving this topic to the general Ask Fedora section, perhaps someone can help you out.

I think I have exactly the same problem. No Kernel 6.4.x boots on my laptop. The last kernel which works reliable is 6.3.12 (the last version released for Fedora 38)

I have a Intel system (12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-1260P × 16) so I think it is not AMD specific but seems to be a general issue with Kernel 6.4.x

What I also observed, my system hangs directly after Grub. If I wait a bit longer my fan gets full speed. So it seems that the boot process not just hangs but is caught in a computing intensive loop.

My system:

AMD 7700x
Asus TUF Gaming X670-PLUS WIFI
32GB 6000 MHz
AMD RX 7900 XT

I haven’t seemed to have any issues, but I did have stability issues until with the new kernel until I disabled TPM. As soon as that happened, everything speed up and I currently have an uptime of about 2 days.

I would suggest disabling TPM due to AMD not having good kernel drivers for it. It’s still an ongoing issue that was thought to be solved but still seems to be causing weird problems for people. Especially on the new AMD CPUs.

Give that a try.

Hope this helps.

Edit: From the penguin man himself

Sorry. Disabling fTPM in the BIOS does not fix the issue on my system and has zero impact on system performance. This issue is recurring in all the 6.4.x kernel releases, with no change in behavor for the last 3 releases (now on 6.4.9).

My system usually needs 2 to 3 boot attempts before the kernel will load. SHIM.EFI will always load, but watching the debug LED readout on my system board, I can tell when the kernel WON’T load as I see “00” flash in the readout, and the Power and Reset switches on the board light up.

Sorry you’re having these issues.

That is unfortunate. You’ve already said that you updated your BIOS, so it’s not likely to be that…

Best make a bug report and see if they relate yours to another one. IMO it’s always better to give them more to go off of than have too little information.

One thing you can try is before making a bug report is using the LTS kernel.

Theres a COPR for this here: kwizart/kernel-longterm-6.1 Copr

You can give that a try and see. I don’t think it’s a hardware issue if the only time you’ve had issues was with the 6.4.x kernels where you previously didn’t. Assuming you can get it to boot of course…

You could try to reinstall with a good USB drive and then install the LTS kernel that way.

After digging a bit deeper on the Fedora bug tracker I found this issue 2229708 – Bootup has half an hour delay on Kernel 6.4.x on Tuxedo InifityBook S15 Gen7 Which most likely describes my bug because I have Tuxedo InifityBook S15. So I will wait for 6.4.11 which should come with a fix.

The fix mention that other devices suffer from the same issue, so maybe this is also the root of your problems @ejkeerbs ?