Failure of reboot after update

[bmarsh at bmarsh.com]

> On Oct 11, 2016, at 1:19 PM, Xen <list at xenhideout.nl> wrote:
> 
> Jim Croft schreef op 11-10-2016 18:23:
>> Thank you for your prompt reply.
>> I am not able to follow the instructions because now I cannot get the
>> computer to boot at all. I will probably have to take it to a shop,
>> and I can’t afford that for a couple of weeks. I do have another
>> computer running Windows 10, so am not desperate. The Kubuntu machine
>> is a toy until I get it working well, and gain enough experience to
>> really use it for practical purposes.
> 
> Jim, normally speaking your hard-drive installation can have no influence over whether some USB stick boots or not.
> 
> Windows normally can have trouble with booting from e.g. DVD when the master boot record of the harddrive is not correct, a very annoying situation. But any Linux boot-stick that will boot without regard of an existing system should boot flawlessly no matter what some Kubuntu update may have done.
> 
> It is almost impossible that Kubuntu could cause your system to hang at the Toshiba screen because normally whatever goes wrong you should *always* get a grub prompt.


Not necessarily so.   When I put the latest ISO to a USB stick, I have three choices of the utility used to build that stick:  unetbootin, or the "make starter disk" with either gtk or kde? 

It usually takes me a couple tries to find the right one...  and on the failures, I do not get a grub boot but rather a blank screen.










> It cannot even normally be your harddisk, that could ever cause your stick to fail booting. Should not be possible.
> 
> So those are the thing that can't be true. So the first thing you would ever need to do at this point is to get your stick to boot (forget about the system in the meantime) or to run some (Kubuntu) live DVD. You must if you can still run Linux and Windows installation DVDs from some external DVD drive, for example. If those things work, then you can go on to the text step. Particularly if you can boot into Linux (Kubuntu) I am sure there are people that could help you troubleshoot from there on.
> 
> Most importantly you will be able to access your internal harddisk.
> 
> What Alan meant was accessing the drive to check on S.M.A.R.T. which is a measure of your drive's health. But if you can't even boot an usb stick (or DVD), that won't be necessary. Regardless you *could* take the hard drive out and hook it onto your Windows 10 computer, but can be difficult because of connectors. Or if you think it's fun you could at least take the hard drive out to see if it will boot without it (some usb stick or DVD). Generally for a laptop there is only one other thing you can check and that Jim Croft schreef op 11-10-2016 18:23:
>> Thank you for your prompt reply.
>> I am not able to follow the instructions because now I cannot get the
>> computer to boot at all. I will probably have to take it to a shop,
>> and I can’t afford that for a couple of weeks. I do have another
>> computer running Windows 10, so am not desperate. The Kubuntu machine
>> is a toy until I get it working well, and gain enough experience to
>> really use it for practical purposes.
> 
> Jim, normally speaking your hard-drive installation can have no influence over whether some USB stick boots or not.
> 
> Windows normally can have trouble with booting from e.g. DVD when the master boot record of the harddrive is not correct, a very annoying situation. But any Linux boot-stick that will boot without regard of an existing system should boot flawlessly no matter what some Kubuntu update may have done.
> 
> It is almost impossible that Kubuntu could cause your system to hang at the Toshiba screen because normally whatever goes wrong you should *always* get a grub prompt.
> 
> It cannot even normally be your harddisk, that could ever cause your stick to fail booting. Should not be possible.
> 
> So those are the thing that can't be true. So the first thing you would ever need to do at this point is to get your stick to boot (forget about the system in the meantime) or to run some (Kubuntu) live DVD. You must if you can still run Linux and Windows installation DVDs from some external DVD drive, for example. If those things work, then you can go on to the text step. Particularly if you can boot into Linux (Kubuntu) I am sure there are people that could help you troubleshoot from there on.
> 
> Most importantly you will be able to access your internal harddisk.
> 
> What Alan meant was accessing the drive to check on S.M.A.R.T. which is a measure of your drive's health. But if you can't even boot an usb stick (or DVD), that won't be necessary. Regardless you *could* take the hard drive out and hook it onto your Windows 10 computer, but can be difficult because of connectors. Or if you think it's fun you could at least take the hard drive out to see if it will boot without it (some usb stick or DVD). Generally for a laptop there is only one other thing you can check and that is the RAM (memory).
> 
> Typically what you say indicates that either the RAM has gone bad or your laptop has died.
> 
> Some laptops have very sudden RAM failures, I've been told. Your laptop was released in January, 2014. Perhaps you still have warranty? Having installed Linux on it should not void it (this is a hardware problem).
> 
> Regards.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Thanks,
>> Jim Croft
>> FROM: Alan Dacey (grokit)
>> SENT: Tuesday, October 11, 2016 10:30
>> TO: Kubuntu user technical support
>> SUBJECT: Re: Failure of reboot after update
>> Going by where the boot process stopped the problem may be your hard
>> drive and not software. Could be your hardware too but let's rule out
>> your hard drive first.
>> Open a terminal any paste the output of the following in your
>> response:
>> sudo smartctl --all /dev/sda
>> If it complains about an ATA device behind a SAT layer then use the
>> following:
>> sudo smartctl -d sat --all /dev/sda
>> That will give an estimate of your disk's health. You then should run
>> a long test, this will take a while, like 45 minutes to an hour and a
>> half depending on the size of your disk. Smartctl will tell you how
>> long it will take so after that time run the command above again and
>> look for any changes.
>> Use the following command to run a long test:
>> sudo smartctl --test=long /dev/sda
>> It is possible but unlikely that you'll need to enable smart logging
>> on your disk. You'll know if you get no real output.
>> Use this command to start logging:
>> smartctl --smart=on --offlineauto=on --saveauto=on /dev/sda
>> If the command 'smartctl' is not found you'll need to install the
>> package first.
>> sudo apt-get install smartmontools
>> You can install a graphical front end with the package gsmartcontrol
>> but if smartctl complained about the layer stuff then you need to go
>> to Options-->Preferences and add "-d sat" (without quotes) in the
>> "Smartctl parameters" box and rescan.
>>> On Tuesday, October 11, 2016 6:02:13 AM Jim Croft wrote:
>>> I am running Kubuntu 16.04 on a Toshiba Satellite E55t-A5320 series
>> computer.
>>> The last two updates, when prompted to reboot, I clicked on the
>> prompt and the reboot failed. The computer froze on the initial
>> Toshiba banner page which is supposed to allow access via F2 to Setup
>> Utility or by F12 to Boot Manager. The first time this happened, I
>> tried to boot from a thumb drive. The computer gave a <Boot Failed>
>> message, but when I attempted a normal boot, it worked, and continued
>> to work, through several reboots, for several days. However, the next
>> time I updated, and clicked the reboot prompt, the reboot again
>> failed, and the previous work-around did not work. The computer will
>> not get beyond the Toshiba introductory banner described previously.
>> Any recommendations? I am not very familiar with Kubuntu, and am only
>> semi-literate on computers in general, so please put it in “baby
>> talk”!
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