I did a clean install of Mint on my wife's laptop several years ago. Over time I have done the upgrades. Lately, on boot up, and only occasionally, it comes up to what appears to be some kind of grub screen. It is like a text version of the grub menu instead of the graphical one. It has the choices of Linux Mint, something else to do with Mint, and the memtest thing. The choice for Linux Mint is highlighted and pressing enter completes the boot up. The thing is, this machine has never had a dual boot setup. So the question is, can I remove the apparent grub setup somehow, or am I looking at a full reinstall?
Need more info? Happy to try.
JC
PS: I don't know for sure when this started.
Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Re: Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
It sounds like a grub recordfail issue. That is; grub notices a failed boot by ways of reading an environment variable from /boot/grub/grubenv and in that case brings up the menu indeed. The "only occasionally" doesn't make this easier to diagnose but do you perhaps have a separate /boot partition that has filled up with old kernels?
df /boot would say, and if that's the issue, Update Manager -> View -> Linux Kernels -> Remove kernels would solve it.-
Larry78723
- Level 14
- Posts: 5476
- Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2019 7:01 pm
- Location: Jasper County, SC, USA
Re: Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
If you installed Mint on your wife's laptop several years ago, did this start before or after you upgraded to 20.1? What version did you upgrade from?JerryC58 wrote: ⤴Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:27 pm I did a clean install of Mint on my wife's laptop several years ago. Over time I have done the upgrades. Lately, on boot up, and only occasionally, it comes up to what appears to be some kind of grub screen. It is like a text version of the grub menu instead of the graphical one. It has the choices of Linux Mint, something else to do with Mint, and the memtest thing. The choice for Linux Mint is highlighted and pressing enter completes the boot up. The thing is, this machine has never had a dual boot setup. So the question is, can I remove the apparent grub setup somehow, or am I looking at a full reinstall?
Need more info? Happy to try.
JC
PS: I don't know for sure when this started.
If you have found the solution to your initial post, please open your original post, click on the pencil, and add (Solved) to the Subject, it helps other users looking for help, and keeps the forum clean.
Re: Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
I went through and deleted old kernels. I'll watch it for a day or so and see what happens.
JC
JC
Re: Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
Deleting old kernels didn't work. When she started the laptop yesterday. it came up to the Dell logo and hung. Wouldn't respond to CTR-ALT-DEL so shut off. Started up and it passed the logo and stopped at what I am calling a text version of a GRUB menu. Pressing enter continued the boot into linux mint. I don't know where this "kind of" grub menu comes from. This machine has never had a duel boot setup. Somebody asked if this started with the upgrade to 20.1. Not sure, but it was pretty shortly afterword.
JC
JC
Re: Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
Right: this is to say that Grub is a red herring here, as it's functioning as intended: it noticed the failed boot and then provided you with the menu so as to potentially have you intervene.JerryC58 wrote: ⤴Mon Jun 21, 2021 11:11 am When she started the laptop yesterday. it came up to the Dell logo and hung. Wouldn't respond to CTR-ALT-DEL so shut off. Started up and it passed the logo and stopped at what I am calling a text version of a GRUB menu. Pressing enter continued the boot into linux mint.
The fact that it only sometimes not boots probably points to a hardware issue; broke or poorly seated RAM, deteriorating HDD/SSD or poorly seated SATA-cable, a fan that has trouble starting up, general powersupply issues, ...
A log from a failed boot has likely not made it to disk, but
journalctl -b -1 lets you look at a detailed log from the previous boot so you may try that on the next first boot after a failed one, but frankly and as indicated I'd first of all get a screwdriver out and clean + reseat stuff. Possibly also see if there's anything suspicious in the BIOS; something may not/wrongly get initialized by it, with the Linux kernel then hanging on something unexpected.
Re: Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
imho this is a troubling statement and needs further definition, plus the hardware needs discussion here.I did a clean install of Mint on my wife's laptop several years ago. Over time I have done the upgrades.
Hope JerryC58 can provide more info re wife's current system.
Everything in life was difficult before it became easy.
Re: Boot Corruption? Mint 20.1
It has been booting the last few days. We have decided to wait til 20.2 comes out and do a clean install.
Thank you all for your time
JC
Thank you all for your time
JC