Kubuntu won't boot

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2021 at 14:59, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users
<ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> Disclaimer - I fully agree with Liam to update our Ubuntu and all other
> Linux installs as often as possible, but with the latest "Maliciousness
> (Re: How do we disable the snap stuff)" related threads in mind, there
> are a few things to keep in mind.
>
> Note, I update my Arch Linux and Ubuntu installs usually more than one
> time a day manually.
>
> However, some Linux software is not security relevant, if a Linux
> machine e.g. isn't connected to the Internet at all and not used with
> USB sticks from others.
>
> Some software wasn't improved much, if at all, most likely for
> more than a decade.
>
> IOW if there is no security or feature reason to update, an update
> gains nothing and in the most worse case it does harm. Some users
> probably should stay with a LTS release as long as possible and avoid
> packages that receive major version updates within an Ubuntu release
> cycle, when it is developed by shilly-shally upstream and results in
> something like Firefox.

Actually, yes, I agree with all that.

I just want to stop and point out that "update" and "upgrade" are not the same.

Update: keep the same current version of my OS or app or suite, but
install all the latest fixes for it from the makers.

Upgrade: replace my OS/app/suite with the new version from my maker,
which means replacing the entire thing and installing a new, bigger,
slower version on top, which will probably but not necessarily look
and work at least in a similar way.

Examples:

Update Ubuntu: get all the latest patches for (say) 18.04 but keep 18.04.

Upgrade Ubuntu: install 20.04 on top of my current 18.04, keeping my
apps and settings.

Yes, I know, the `apt` commands *are* confusingly named. At least
Zypper calls one "refresh" and the other "update", which is a little
more meaningful.

Actually, on that note, I just though of something. Not sure if it
will help Rikona.

I upgraded my laptop from 14.04 to 16.04 to 18.04 and this year to 20.04.

20.04 worked for a while and then started failing to boot with errors
about being unable to unpack the initrd and disk errors on the
console.

I found if I went back to an older kernel (via GRUB's Advanced Options
menu) it would boot.

It was scary: I thought my SSD was dying, so I bought a new one.

I copied my partitions onto a new disk with Gparted off a live USB and
put it in a different machine. I booted off a USB key, checked my
partitions for errors with `fsck -f`, and managed to boot into
recovery mode (VERY slowly) and then installed the newer HWE kernel.

This fixed it. It booted fine, without errors except a missing
`resume` device (I used ZRAM and had no swap partition to avoid SSD
wear).

I have read that newer SSDs are much more robust so I created a swap
partition, put a line for it into `/etc/fstab`. The errors continued.
I had to rebuild my `initrd` which I've never had to do before, but
this fixed it.

So, emboldened, I tried to fix the old laptop. I fsck-ed the
partitions, I ran `trim` on them, I installed the HWE kernel, I
created a swap partition on the other (Windows) SSD and purged ZRAM
and rebuilt my `initrd`.

The machine is still running just fine and now I have a spare SSD I
don't really need, which is a bit annoying. But it only cost me as
much as a takeaway meal, so that is not too bad.

If Rikona's machine was never updated, then so long as they can get it
to boot, maybe a new kernel will get it running again.

The thing is, though, that my laptop booted normally into GRUB,
offered me the choice of Ubuntu, but if I picked it, there was some
disk activity, followed by a very long pause -- 10min or so -- then
some scary error messages about disk errors.

Rikona said their machine was not even getting as far as GRUB, so I am
not sure if this will help. But OTOH, for me, I dual boot Win10 and
Ubuntu on that machine, so I *always* see the GRUB menu. If Rikona
_only_ has Kubuntu and nothing else, maybe the GRUB menu does not
appear?

I do not know the keystroke to force it to appear, because it depends
whether BIOS or UEFI and they did not say.

It could be [Shift] or [Esc].

https://askubuntu.com/questions/16042/how-to-get-to-the-grub-menu-at-boot-time


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