Grub Rescue Issue After Last Update [Solved]

[dragonfly]

Thanks for the encouragement pbear! I am going to be more careful going forward and on how to properly shut down, for sure, in the future (and print these tips out as you have recommended). I have learned so much through this process about the different screens and processes for Linux. I read once Thomas Edison was asked how it felt to fail 1,000 times before creating a working light bulb. He is credited with saying “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." Hopefully I'll figure it out in few less :D
Do I need to do anything to complete this thread?

[linexer2016]

A great tip there (I have also found it in a forum search and some posters as far back as 2017 have mentioned it too). I reckon it would be a useful instruction to be added into the MX Manual. I have encountered (not regularly but enough to be irritating) situations where a hard reset was needed and this little tip has now formed part of my own personal library of tips. I will copy hereunder a succinct enough description for anyone interested. This from https://mirzmaster.wordpress.com/2006/1 ... ly-boring/

... try the following set of keystrokes, in order:

ALT + SysReq + r

This stands for Raw keyboard mode.

ALT + SysReq + s

This syncs the disk.

ALT + SysReq + e

This terminates all processes.

ALT + SysReq + i

Kill’s all processes that weren’t terminated nicely.

ALT + SysReq + s

This syncs the disk, again.

ALT + SysReq + u

Remounts all filesystems as read only.

ALT + SysReq + b

This last one will reboot the system.

Think you’ll have difficulty remembering all that? Well, there’s a mnemonic for memorizing it: Raising Skinny Elephants Is So Utterly Boring.

[pbear]

Do I need to do anything to complete this thread?

IMHO, no, as I don't think we can call it "solved" and not sure what else we would call it. Anyhoo, good luck.

[linexer2016]

Suggestion ... resolved?

[dragonfly]

Unfortunately, not yet linexer2016. I'm going to try a few things and if those don't work, I'm going to reinstall it. If I find something that works I'll post it.

[dragonfly]

Okay, so I am back. I did a total reinstall from the live usb. It loaded successfully. As I was tweaking some of the preferences, the green update box appeared with "342 new updates available." I did that successfully. So far, so good. A few minutes later as I was trying to accomplish a task online, the web page kept shutting down. The photo I saved in downloads would no longer open. Everything became unresponsive, so I followed the excellent suggestions on how to shut down properly. Eventually, instead of the black screen with the Lenovo theme and grub rescue> prompt, I had a totally black screen with a flashing cursor in the very far left corner after rebooting. Before it actually gets to the flashing cursor, as it runs its check, it says something like, "Error F1 not found: 0X601 (broken bios?) When it is at the flashing cursor screen, I learned if I ctrl+alt+F5, it brings me to a log in screen that accepts my user name and password in what I am guessing is called a CLI login since I didn't open a terminal. Everything worked fine after the reinstall and before the acceptance of updates. My computer doesn't seem to like the updates. Does this mean I need to do something to repair the BIOS itself? Is that possible? Thanks for any help in advance-

[pbear]

I very much doubt the problem is the updates. Rather, I expect it's a problem with the computer, perhaps BIOS but more likely hardware (RAM or hard drive). You may recall, I mentioned concern about the drive earlier.

Please boot a live session and open Quick System Info (an app on Menu). You will see a notification that a system report has been copied to clipboard. Set up an internet connection, open this thread and paste in the report from clipboard. As mentioned in the notification, the report is already formatted to display correctly once pasted.

Meanwhile, if you're feeling industrious, you might want to run the Memory Test (option on boot menu of live session). If you do, please report the results.

[dragonfly]

Code: Select all

System:    Host: <filter> Kernel: 5.10.0-9-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/antiX/vmlinuz quiet splasht nosplash 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 tk: Gtk 3.24.24 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: MX-21_x64 Wildflower October 20  2021 base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 80XS v: Lenovo ideapad 320-15ABR 
           serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 v: Lenovo ideapad 320-15ABR serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: LENOVO model: LNVNB161216 v: SDK0J40700WIN serial: <filter> UEFI: LENOVO 
           v: 5QCN16WW date: 05/22/2017 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 23.0 Wh condition: 23.2/30.0 Wh (77%) volts: 8.4/7.5 
           model: SMP L16M2PB1 type: Li-poly serial: <filter> status: Unknown 
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: AMD A12-9720P RADEON R7 12 COMPUTE CORES 4C+8G bits: 64 
           type: MCP arch: Excavator family: 15 (21) model-id: 65 (101) stepping: 1 
           microcode: 6006118 L2 cache: 1024 KiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm bogomips: 21559 
           Speed: 1388 MHz min/max: 1400/2700 MHz boost: disabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1395 
           2: 1396 3: 1381 4: 1387 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
           Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
           Type: mds status: Not affected 
           Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full AMD retpoline, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics] vendor: Lenovo driver: amdgpu v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:01.0 chip ID: 1002:9874 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: amdgpu,ati 
           unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
           OpenGL: 
           renderer: AMD Radeon R7 Graphics (CARRIZO DRM 3.40.0 5.10.0-9-amd64 LLVM 11.0.1) 
           v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.5 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: AMD Kabini HDMI/DP Audio vendor: Lenovo driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:01.1 chip ID: 1002:9840 
           Device-2: AMD Family 15h Audio vendor: Lenovo driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:09.2 chip ID: 1022:157a 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.0-9-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Lenovo 
           driver: ath10k_pci v: kernel port: 2100 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 168c:0042 
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Lenovo 
           driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 1000 bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8168 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-3: Qualcomm Atheros type: USB driver: btusb bus ID: 1-1.1:3 chip ID: 0cf3:e500 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 946.10 GiB used: 21.2 MiB (0.0%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM035-1RK172 size: 931.51 GiB block size: 
           physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: 5400 rpm serial: <filter> 
           rev: LVM2 scheme: GPT 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: Cruzer Glide size: 14.59 GiB 
           block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B serial: <filter> rev: 1.00 scheme: MBR 
Partition: ID-1: / raw size: N/A size: 5.73 GiB used: 21.2 MiB (0.4%) fs: overlay 
           source: ERR-102 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 8.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap swappiness: 15 (default 60) 
           cache pressure: 100 (default) dev: /dev/sda3 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 52.1 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 52 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
Info:      Processes: 220 Uptime: 1m Memory: 7.23 GiB used: 757.8 MiB (10.2%) Init: SysVinit 
           v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 alt: 10 Shell: quick-system-in 
           running in: quick-system-in inxi: 3.0.36 

[dragonfly]

#28 is the results of the the system report. When I try the Memory Test from the live usb, it does nothing. It only goes to a black screen. I agree something is going on besides updates.

[pbear]

Nothing in the system report jumps out at me. Relatively modern machine, firmware ("BIOS") five years old but not ancient.

Let's start by running the same test we did last time, i.e., mount the internal drive's system partition and check directories. So, boot a live session and run these two commands:

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
ls /mnt

Copy-and-paste the output into your next reply. Recall, you're looking for something which looks like this.

Second, the best way I know to test the hard drive is installing to USB drive and seeing whether that works okay. Pretty easy to do, provided you have handy a largish flash drive (or, better, USB hard drive), preferably 16 GB but 32 GB (or more) would be better. This is only a test, so you're not committing to tying up the drive indefinitely. One crucial detail: if using a flash drive, it must be 3.0 (a 2.0 drive is much too slow for running an operating system). You do the installation same as for an internal drive, except different target. After installation, boot to the USB drive and run updates. Get this far (if you can) then report back.