Dell Inspiron 5555 -Boot Problems after update

Asked by Laci Papp

Hi,

I am having some trouble with my Ubuntu certified Dell Inspiron 5555 laptop.

After installing updates two days ago, the video card started overheating, producing a constant heavy load. Not knowing what the issue was I quickly saved my data and wanted to reinstall everything by using the factory image at boot time. I couldn't reach the boot menu though, apparently the updates also messed the bootloader somehow, so I can't get Ubuntu to load/

So at the moment I'm stuck with an (initramfs) shell, and an error message "Unable to find a medium containing a live file system".
There is also a "casper.log" file containing dozens of repetitions of the following error: " /init: line 11: can't open /dev/sr0"

It is possible though to mount the factory folders from sda3 and my root partition on sda4, so I don't think there's any physical damage to the system, just maybe some bootloader configuration issues.

Could you give any advice on what to do? I wouldn't want to lose the factory image configs which worked very well. So maybe there is way to reinstall the factory image? Or should I use some live CD? I'm afraid that the option might not have the exact firmware I need.

Thanks in advance,
Laszlo

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu-Certification Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
Laci Papp
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Laci Papp (laszlo-g-papp) said :
#1

The machine is a DELL Inspiron 15 5555, with the following specs:
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/servicetag/JPXN362/configuration

Revision history for this message
Laci Papp (laszlo-g-papp) said :
#2

Some more info:

When I got the laptop, out of the box in January, after the first run of Ubuntu I let it download all the updates.
This is a process that takes more than half an hour, so I let it do it's business. I'm not sure if the System hibernated by its own in the meanwhile after more than 30 minutes, but when I checked after about an hour or so the update process was frozen at some package whose name I remember to have contained the words "grub" and "efi".

Back then I restarted the computer Ubuntu didn't run, it failed with a blue screen of some sort, but fortunately the firmware recovery menu was accessible and I could reload the original image.

After this I decided to be cautious and exclude every update.
Two days ago I decided that this is too much of a loss (although I have let security updates happen), and I let all the updates install, except for those packages which contained "grub" "efi" "boot" and their dpendencies ( using dpkg-set selections "package hold").

After the update the overheating and the unbootability started.

That's the complete story, hope this helps.

Thanks in advance,
Cheers Laszlo

Revision history for this message
Laci Papp (laszlo-g-papp) said :
#3

Hello people,

The problem was solved, by choosing a GRUB bootimage in the BIOS UEFI shell.
From the grub shell the linux image on sda4 was mounted. After that the fglrx and xorg drivers have reverted to the firmware version from the repo in /dev/sda3/debs.

Cheers,
Laszlo

Revision history for this message
Po-Hsu Lin (cypressyew) said :
#4

Cool, thanks for sharing this information!