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I've just installed a fresh ubuntu 16.04 and run apt-get upgrade, which apparently resulted in linux 4.4.0-22 being installed.

On reboot, after I select ubuntu from the menu (I have Windows installed as well on a different disk), I get a blinking cursor. The boot hangs here indefinitely.

I tried manually selecting linux 4.4.0-15 from the "advanced" menu in grub and it boots fine.

Attached is a poor man's screenshot of where the boot hangs when I select the 4.4.0-22 kernel recovery mode:

enter image description here

Are any of these errors?

Note: The 4.4.0-15 kernel is failing now as well, and I've been able to sometimes get to a login prompt with 4.4.0-20. It seems to depend on the way the wind is blowing. Windows is working fine.

I have started removing physical devices from my PC to see if it's a hardware issue. I've been able to boot using the default 4.4.0-20 kernel after removing some memory and 2 hard disks. It's too early to tell if I just got lucky though.

quant
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2 Answers2

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I've had a few problems with upgrading Ubuntu 16.04 . I never found out the reason but my "guess" has been that it's a problem with the upgrade and not really something wrong with the kernel or Ubuntu 16.04 for my system.

What you can consider is creating a boot disk and boot off of it. Select "Try Ubuntu". I guess this should work. If it does, it at least means that the kernel and Ubuntu 16.04 will work for your system.

Maybe some left-over settings is causing you problems. From here, you can consider the following to re-install Ubuntu:

  1. Mount your root partition and copy system-level files to your home directory. For example, at least everything from /etc.
  2. Select "Install Ubuntu" and one of the options available in Ubuntu 16.04 is to write over your existing Ubuntu, leaving your /home directory intact.
  3. It will wipe the system-level files and install a base system.
  4. Yes, now you have to go through and install all the missing packages. Hopefully, you don't have to stress out what settings you need to edit and just copy over the configuration file(s) from the old /etc.

I wouldn't be stingy with step (1). Copy any settings in /var and so on if you think it would take some time to recover. Just make sure you put it in your home directory. Other parts of the system will be wiped.

Hopefully, this should work. Yes, it's a bit heavy-handed, but I've done this a couple of times (on different systems) for Ubuntu 16.04 already. Trying to figure out the cause is better, but sometimes, you don't have the time...

Ray
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You can also try the 4.6 kernel. I found this guide to be quite helpful but I had to match the kernel number to the one found here. Essentially I changed just the last 6 digits, which I assume represent the build date.

I'm sorry to say that the 4.6 kernel still has the same problem on my machine. If yours does as well, we should try matching up components to see what is causing the issue. I would hate to be unable to update to a new version of Ubuntu, and that might happen if we have the same issue and it doesn't get fixed.

fossfreedom
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dlpolanco
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