On 2022-12-17 14:39, David Christensen wrote:
On 12/17/22 04:44, Gary Dale wrote:
On 2022-12-16 21:29, Gary Dale wrote:
My laptop no longer boots thanks to the latest update. It stops after I select a normal boot - it goes to the text mode console and displays an error message about: [ 0.717939] ACPI BIOS Error (bug).
If I go into recovery mode, I don't get that error but then it stops after a message about the nouveau driver. I never get to a command prompt.
I can boot from System Rescus CD. I get the same BIOS error message but then it continues on as if it wasn't important.
I tried updating the BIOS but that did nothing to resolve the problem. I did a reinstall and the problem survives.
The problem actually started earlier in the day, when I did the apt full-upgrade. It updated the nvidia drivers so it wanted a reboot. When I rebooted, it refused to start sddm. It just sat there. I rebooted into recovery mode and changed to lightdm, which did the same thing. Gdm3 actually switched into a graphics mode before hanging.
I purged the nvidia drivers and that was when the message cropped up. I tried booting from system rescue cd then switching into a bash shell on my / partition but lost my DNS so I couldn't (re) install the nouveau drivers (didn't want to touch the nvidia ones again). I did try updating initramfs, in case there was some nvidia stuff hanging around but it didn't help.
That led to me reinstalling. I copied the Bookworm netinst to my Ventoy USB stick, but it wouldn't boot so I went back to Bullseye - which installed but wouldn't bring up a GUI. Booted to recovery mode, brought up the network and upgraded to Bookworm. That is where I am now - with the error message appearing after I leave the boot menu.
This is basically clean install - just done in two parts. My laptop had been running fine since I got it and installed Debian.
I couldn't get the Bookworm alpha install to work even when dd'd directly to a USB stick. However I was able to get to a recovery mode from the Bullseye install on Ventoy. From there I added the nVidia drivers and that got me past the error message. I was able to eventually get to a recovery session from the installation on the laptop. Sddm simply refused to work while gdm3 only seems to give me a Gnome desktop. After installing lightdm, I was able to get back to a Plasma desktop.
Along the way, I found that my (Debian/Bookworm) workstation wont read USB sticks formatted with FAT32! I'm hoping a reboot later will fix that.
Anyway, sddm seems to have some real problems with nVidia drivers. My laptop on the other hand seems to need them even though non-Bookworm distros don't.
If you want a GNU/Linux distribution that "just works", one possibility is Debian Stable and "supported hardware". The former is easy -- download a d-i ISO. The latter can be anywhere from trivial to impossible to determine a priori; the practical answer is install and find out.
What is the manufacturer, model, and part number of your computer? What options does it have? What components have you added, changed, or removed? What external hardware is connected? Do you have a broadband Internet connection?
What d-i media did you use? Where did you get it? Did you verify the checksum of the download and/or media?
David
Thanks David, but as I explained, Debian/Stable doesn't "just work". You need the second part of your condition, but it's hard to know if hardware is supported until you try it. And what doesn't work one week may work the next.
I don't blame Debian in this case. It's clearly an nVidia problem. Normally I stay away from them when getting something for Linux, but I got a great Black Friday deal. That's why I even got a new laptop to begin with. Apart from the nVidia components, it seems to work fine.
Added nothing - just removed the Windows partitions and installed Linux.
As I explained, I used Debian netinst copied to a Ventoy USB. What was strange is that Stable has no problem installing (just problems running) but Testing seems to get hung up with the networking (when I tried a graphical install, it at least showed that was what it was doing. The text based installer flashed something on the screen but never got around to doing more than the background colours - no text or progress bar - so I wasn't sure what it was doing). Also the current testing alpha netinst iso doesn't seem work with Ventoy, which meant I had to dd it to its own usb stick. And yes, I only download the files from debian.org.
Have you tried finding the Debian Testing netinst checksums? You can find them for the weekly builds if you look hard enough but not the ones for the Alpha release. I thought maybe the alpha release would be a little more stable than a weekly build....
I can confirm that the problem with FAT32 was fixed by a reboot. I don't reboot every day normally,
The laptop is an ASUS FA506ICB. I'll be filing a bug report or three later. Yesterday I just needed to get it working again, but I wanted to document the pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth - I suspect I may have to do this again...