On Thu, 10 Nov 2016 16:24:31 -0500
"David A. De Graaf" <dad(a)datix.us> wrote:
My trusty old IBM T30 laptop will no longer boot with the latest
kernel-4.7.9-200.fc24.i686
kernel-4.8.4-200.fc24.i686
kernel-PAE-4.8.4-200.fc24.i686
It will still boot
kernel-4.7.7-200.fc24.i686
The grub2 menu is displayed, and after selecting the 4.7.7-200 kernel
there's a 2-3 sec delay with blinking cursor, then I'm prompted for
the encryption passphrase for the /home filesystem. Then the
voluminous messages (from removing the rhgb boot option) scroll forth
and bootup proceeds normally.
However, If I choose any of the newer kernels, the blinking cursor
remains forever; no prompt for the encryption passphrase occurs; the
keyboard is totally non-responsive. Power cycling is required to
recover.
Things I've tried:
- dnf remove <the "bad" kernel>, and reinstall it.
- Rebuild initramfs-4.8.4-200.fc24.i686.img with dracut. The new file
is only one byte bigger, probably due to a different date, and
still won't boot.
- Added the secret 'dis_ucode_ldr' boot option, as revealed in
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/4qrl1k/kernel_46_wont_boot_how_c...
but this seemed aimed at newer IBM laptops, and indeed, had no
effect on my T30.
- Updated the BIOS. The T30 has two components: the BIOS and the EC
(Embedded Controller). My BIOS was up to date at version 2.10
but the EC was v. 1.03, while v. 1.07 was available.
Sadly, updating to EC v. 1.07 did not alleviate the problem.
Any thoughts, shared experience, commiserations, suggestions?
What can be so different about these newer kernels?
Between 4.7.7 and 4.7.9, there were some bug fixes. The first two seem
unrelated to your problem. I couldn't check the 1352140 ticket because
the server had problems, but the I2C leads me to conclude that it
probably isn't related either.
Changelog * Thu Oct 20 2016 Justin M. Forbes
<jforbes(a)fedoraproject.org> - 4.7.9-200
- Linux v4.7.9
- CVE-2016-5195 (rhbz 1384344 1387080)
* Tue Oct 18 2016 Peter Robinson <pbrobinson(a)fedoraproject.org>
- Build in AXP20X_I2C (should fix rhbz 1352140)
* Mon Oct 17 2016 Laura Abbott <labbott(a)redhat.com> - 4.7.8-200
- Linux v4.7.8
My suspicion would be that, since kernel developers use newer hardware
to develop and test, they made changes to the kernel that affected you,
but that their testing did not catch.
I suggest you open a bugzilla against the kernel, and basically put in
the contents of this email message. Are there any kind of log messages?
It's very early, so probably not.
You could try compiling a local kernel newer than 4.7.7, to see if
compiling in your environment would fix the problem. I think that's a
long shot though.