[Bug 1747889] Re: (Acer Aspire V3-372) System not booting after update

[Rod Smith]

I've recently encountered this on an HP ProBook 6470b. This system
doesn't seem to be able to "remember" its BootOrder variable; typing
"sudo efibootmgr" returns results similar to this:

BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
No BootOrder is set; firmware will attempt recovery
Boot0000* ubuntu
Boot0001* ubuntu
Boot0002* ubuntu
Boot0003* ubuntu
Boot0004* ubuntu
Boot0005* ubuntu
Boot0006* ubuntu

It appears that every time the system reboots, fbx64.efi adds a new
"ubuntu" entry; but because the system is amnesiac about BootOrder,
those entries are never added. (Note that the "no BootOrder is set;
firmware will attempt recovery" message appears after every reboot and
even after a power off and reboot. It's running the latest firmware,
which is rather elderly [2012].) Rather than reboot, it would be better
if fbx64.efi would launch the boot entry that it adds. It would also be
good if fbx64.efi could check for existing entries that match what it
wants rather than blindly add a new one; as it is, on a system like my
HP, sooner or later the NVRAM will fill up if the user walks away while
the system is in its reboot loop, and of course this will cause
additional problems, possibly including a "Samsung brick" type of
scenario.

I don't know if this HP has a buggy firmware or failing NVRAM. (I bought
it used and so I don't know how it worked when new.) I've seen EFI
flakiness on other systems as they age; one four-year-old laptop I own
can't accept ANY NVRAM changes, for instance. Both this HP ProBook and
that other four-year-old laptop are perfectly functional otherwise.
Having a way to work around such minor hardware failures as systems age
is desirable.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1747889

Title:
  (Acer Aspire V3-372) System not booting after update

Status in shim-signed package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  After installing the latest updates for Ubuntu 17.10, my computer
  (Acer Aspire V3-372) was no longer able to boot. It got stuck in a
  loop, displaying the following error message for a few milliseconds,
  then restarting again:

  System BootOrder not found. Initializing defaults.
  Creating boot entry "BootXXXX" with label "ubuntu" for file "\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi"

  I suspect this has something to do with the update to shim-signed
  1.33.1~17.10.1 as "Failure to boot or validate validly signed EFI
  binaries" is listed as a potential regression on
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shim/+bug/1708245/+editstatus

  There was also a very similar bug reported for Fedora 27:
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1512410

  Selecting any (new) UEFI files as trusted did not solve the issue,
  neither did disabling secure boot or resetting the secure boot option
  in BIOS to factory default and it's still not working after adding
  EFI/ubuntu/shimx64.efi to trusted files again.

  The workaround I've found for now, is selecting "EFI File Boot 0"
  (which is the previously added trusted file) as primary boot device.
  But that's just a workaround, I think I should be able to just boot
  from my SSD as before.

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