Intermittent boot problems on Nadia

[sheesania]

Several months ago, I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on an Acer Aspire One AO722-825 laptop, with these specs:
AMD C-Series Dual-Core C-60 processor
4 GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6290 graphics card, w/ 256 MB dedicated memory

I experienced various problems with Ubuntu, but the worst was that, after a few months of use, it started to be that it would only start about about half of the time. When it didn't start up properly, it would go to a black screen, then return to the purple loading screen two times. Then I had to do a hard shutdown. Windows 7 is also on this laptop, and it never had any similar problems.

I had tried Mint before on a USB on this computer, and it seemed to work well, so I tried installing Mint 14 with Cinnamon, 64-bit, next to Ubuntu. Mint runs very nicely once started, but the second time I tried to boot it, same problem! It starts loading, then changes to a different screen, then goes back to the same one.

I got boot logs for both successful and unsuccessful boots and looked at them with a file comparison program, and I can't find anything significant. I attached them in case they'd be helpful, along with xorg.0.log and kern.log.

So, any ideas about what could be the issue here? I know this laptop isn't great with Linux (it has other weird problems with wireless drivers, graphics drivers, etc.) but I haven't come across any other user of it experiencing similar boot problems.

Thanks!

[kingnick42]

Could you try replacing Mint with CentOS and see if the problem persists?

[Jeisson]

Try disabling splash screen in Linux boot. Edit /etc/default/grub with administration privileges and remove 'spash' option from GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable. This is, the line

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

should be replaced by:

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"

Then, run 'sudo update-grub', and restart your machine. This is no a fix, is a workaround that is working on my laptop. I do not know the cause of the problem.

Note, you may disable booting from Network in BIOS if you have it as first boot device. It seems Wireless is working well on Nadia.

Best regards.

[sheesania]

Thanks for the suggestions!

Jeisson, I tried disabling the splash screen as you described, running 'sudo update-grub' afterwards. Unfortunately, on the very next boot, I experienced the same problem! BTW - I have network boot set first because on my particular laptop, there is some conflict between the Ethernet and wireless drivers that causes freezes. For some reason, if network boot is set first, there aren't any problems. I will eventually disable the offending Ethernet driver and work around it that way, but for now, the network boot trick works fine

kingnick42, I'm currently downloading CentOS and will try that.

[sheesania]

Alright, so I installed CentOS (not without some mistakes - ever accidentally installed GRUB to a partition's boot record, instead of the MBR? ), and after seven boots, I have had no issues. Apparently, this problem seems to be limited to the Ubuntu family. So what's the way forward here? Are any fixes now apparent, or is any more investigation I could do? I would rather use Ubuntu or Mint than CentOS, if possible, but I would be happy to get any Linux distribution working smoothly!

Thanks again for the help!

[everiman]

I am having a similar problem with a Nadia installation on an Acer AX 1200 with Athlon 4850E and 3 GB, dual booting to Vista.

If I shut down properly, and leave the computer off for a period time (ie overnight) and choose the default linux from the grub menu either the video goes dead (monitor indicates there is no signal) or the video is scrambled with a black screen and about three or four lines of random color.

If I shut down properly and power back up after a minute or so linux boots as it should from the grub menu default choice.

After Mint failing to boot from default, doing a hard shut down, and powering back up, and choosing the Linux recovery option from grub, then choosing the resume normal boot afterwards always gets me back to a fully functional Mint.

I changed the grub to make Windows the default choice by changing the grub.cfg file as per instructions in this forum, Grub works fine if I leave everything alone, going to Windows and booting Windows normally.

When I use Linux recovery mode to fix the grub I get a message saying a file has been set to a future time and I should check the hardware clock. I checked the clock setting in bios and they are OK for my time zone (Mountain standard).

This is a minor PITA as I can always get into Mint by choosing the recovery option in grub, and I have to use Windows most of the time anyway (not because I like it so much but it is bugging me.

[sheesania]

everiman, I tried booting into recovery mode, and while it did boot, the graphics driver didn't start up properly, and I had some very dramatic flickering! So unfortunately, I don't think that will work for me. I too am now using Windows most of the time, mainly because I use this computer for school, and I don't always have five minutes to try starting up Linux, then having it fail, doing a hard shutdown, trying again...

[kingnick42]

Ok, so if CentOS works fine, it is most likely a combination of mint and your hardware. Now that Mint 14 is out, could you install that and see if your problem persists. (Keep using grub, its much nicer - just stick grub on /dev/sda and you'll have no problems with grub ). See if using Mint 14 fixes your problem.

[sheesania]

Actually, I was trying Linux Mint 14 (14.1 to be precise) when I encountered the same problem I had in Ubuntu. Should I try an older version?

Oh, and yes, I had no problem fixing grub - just booted Ubuntu off a live usb and ran a command

[laptoprecycler]

I´ve been experiencing a very similar issue with LM 14.1 64bit Cinnamon on an Acer Aspire 5253 with Radeon HD 6250. Not sure if this is a solution or a workaround, but I installed fglrx-amdcccle from the repos just to see if it was some weird driver issue caused by the Galium drivers.

Code: Select all

 sudo apt-get install fglrx-amdcccle 

Hasn't hung since. Can´t make promises, but definitely worth a try.

[kingnick42]

Actually, I was trying Linux Mint 14 (14.1 to be precise) when I encountered the same problem I had in Ubuntu. Should I try an older version?

Oh, and yes, I had no problem fixing grub - just booted Ubuntu off a live usb and ran a command

Hmm...Now I'd say wait until the 13.04 release, and then try that