Ubuntu

Single-boot 12.04 won't boot following automatic update

Asked by octalman

Bootstrap fails with a black screen. The keyboard is completely nonresponsive, including the power button. A dark purple screen displays, sometimes followed by a dark green display, before the black screen. The only way to resume is to remove power. Since the sytem is a laptop, the battery must be removed also.

Boot-up is usually successful on a second try, but it sometimes takes three or even, in one instance, four tries.

This is a single-boot Ubuntu 12.04 LTS setup, installed in August, 2012. It has been kept up to date.

The hardware is an HP Pavilion with AMD Vision A-8 quad-core processor. uname reports:
     3.2.0-58-generic #88-Ubuntu SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux
The hard disk is formatted with an ext4 filesystem.

This problem began sometime in early December. Other than ongoing issues with Gnome 3 (and Firefox never restoring without manual intervention), the installation has been stable and reliable. Also, sometime since December 1, an issue has arisen with wireless connectivity. I can connect to the router, the status report states that wireless connection is active, but neither Firefox nor Thunderbird is able to connect to a server, although they are able to do so via wired ethernet connection (disconnected when trying to use wireless).

This problem appears to result from the 56 update. Any clues?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

If you boot to an earlier kernel, does it help?

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octalman (octalman) said : 		#2

Booting never got far enough to select which kernel. However, today, the system booted on the first try, after having been shut down for over 30 hours.

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octalman (octalman) said : 		#3

OK, that's not quite true. The system did on a few occasions allow selecting. In every case, however, I chose to boot in recovery mode (to the installed kernel).

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#4

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

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octalman (octalman) said : 		#5

This bug needs to remain current.

It appears that booting proceeds normally under battery-only power. When attempting to boot with the external power source/charger, booting hangs as described. Sorry, it has taken a bit to figure this out.

This bug may be related to another bug which I reported earlier, which causes shutdown to hang if external power is removed during shutdown. Sorry, I can't look it up right now because righ-click doesn't work, at least with Firefox. I need to post that too, since it has been a problem for at least two weeks now.

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Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said : 		#6

That battery issue unfortunately sounds like a firmware issue :( Is this a new laptop? When did you start having this issue?

Hamish

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octalman (octalman) said : 		#7

l bought the computer, an HP Pavilion dv6 with AMD A8 processor, in
July, 2012, direct from HP.

It has never run Windows. I reformatted and installed Ubutu 12.04 in a
single boot configuration.

I used it away from home at hotels (wired) and wirelessly at my son's
house and at home for over a year, including over Thanksgiving, 2013,
with no problems at all. I never had any major issues with it until the
Ubuntu updates in early December, 2013, as described in my postings.

Wilbur Killebrew

On 03/25/2014 05:11 PM, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote:
> Your question #241720 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/241720
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty proposed the following answer:
> That battery issue unfortunately sounds like a firmware issue :( Is this
> a new laptop? When did you start having this issue?
>
> Hamish
>

Revision history for this message
Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty (hamishmb) said : 		#8

Maybe it's a problem with bad sectors on your hdd. Sorry for the delay. If you can successfully get to the grub boot menu, boot recovery mode, and drop to root shell prompt. From there you can run:

fsck -fvc /dev/sda1 where /dev/sda1 is the partition your OS is installed to. If you've got more than one, check all of them.

If it warns about data being damaged, insure you're not booted in read-write mode (remedy this by rebooting to recovery mode again).

Hope this helps,
Hamish

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