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My Acer laptop (Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS) fails to boot with new kernels 5.0.0-23 and 5.0.0-25. It boots normally with the old kernel 4.18.0-25.

Kernel 5.0.0-23 was installed prior to rebooting on 8/6/19. Kernel 5.0.0-25 was installed today (8/13/19).

I had been periodically booting with kernel 4.18.0-25, running Software Updater, and seeing if that fixed the problem. It didn't. (I am currently using a different computer for most purposes.) Today Software Updater installed the newest kernel, 5.0.0-25. When I restarted the laptop after the update, booting failed in the same way as it did for 5.0.0-23.

Now I will keep the laptop disconnected from the Internet, and not allow any more updates until I find out how to prevent updates from removing old kernels. I don't want to lose 4.18.0-25. I expected it to be gone today after the update, since updates had been saving only one old kernel, but fortunately it is still there. (Three kernels are present.)

Here is a short description of the problem.

When I boot with kernel 5.0.0-23, the screen goes dark and the power light turns off about 20 seconds after I select Ubuntu from the Grub menu.

When I boot with kernel 5.0.0-23 in recovery mode, the same thing happens after about 80 seconds, which is well after the Recovery Menu appears. The Recovery Menu screen has a few boot messages scattered diagonally across it, and has some other display problems.

History: On Tuesday 8/6/19, Software Updater appeared, and told me that it had updates and that the computer needed to restart to finish installing previous updates. I selected "Remind Me Later" but went ahead and restarted the laptop, which failed when booting, as described above.

This is dual-boot with Windows 10. Windows boots normally. The Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS boot/install USB stick that I used for installing Ubuntu boots normally.

Acer Aspire 3 A315-51-361T (purchased new about a year ago)

Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

Secure Boot is enabled

What might be causing this problem? And what should I do about it?

bnjsfdls
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2 Answers2

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From the comments...

I strongly suspect that your problem booting with the 5.x.x kernels is due to you possibly having an older BIOS that needs updating.

Boot to the 4.18.0-25 kernel, and in the terminal type sudo dmidecode -s bios-version to get the current BIOS version. Then go to the Acer web site and see if there's a newer BIOS for your computer.

According to https://www.acer.com/ac/en/GB/content/support-product/7210?b=1 BIOS 1.14, released 3/29/2019 is the current version.

Update #1:

The user has reported that their current BIOS is version 1.05.

heynnema
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It turns out that my original plan of periodically booting with kernel 4.18.0-25, running Software Updater, and seeing if that fixed the problem, eventually produced the desired result.

The arrival of kernel 5.0.0-29 solved the problem. The laptop now boots normally, using kernel 5.0.0-29. Everything seems back to normal.

Back in August, when I found out that kernel 4.18.0-25 would continue to be saved during updates (because I was booting from it when running those updates), I resumed periodically connecting to the Internet and running Software Updater. The latest kernel update installed kernel 5.0.0-29. (Kernel 5.0.0-27 had failed in the same way as the previous two 5.0.0 kernels.)

So, now I will use the laptop normally, and do updates normally. I expect kernel 4.18.0-25 to disappear with the next kernel update, and that will be OK, since kernel 5.0.0-29 works on my laptop.

The comments at the beginning of the script /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal explain which kernels are saved during kernel updates.

bnjsfdls
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