How to boot latest kernel after updating?

grumbly

Hi, I'm having troubles! I updated through the software center, but solus is still booting the old kernel.
I've run clr-boot-manager update. Result of clr-boot-manager list-kernels is

* com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121
  com.solus-project.current.4.20.16-112

but that's not the kernel it's booting.
When I get to the boot menu (spam spacebar) and edit the initrd filename used from the one it's using (4.20.16-112) to the new one (5.1.14-121) then I get this error:

  Failed to open file: EFI\com.solus-project\initrd-com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121
  Trying to load files to higher address
  Failed to open file: EFI\com.solus-project\initrd-com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121

I've tried reinstalling the kernel using eopkg with no change. Thank you for looking!
What are the correct full set of boot options needed to boot the 5.1.14-121 kernel? What's different from trying to boot the 4.20.16-112 kernel?

viyoriya

grumbly try grub-customizer its GUI based so you remove old kernel and save it will update the grub.cfg

sudo eopkg it grub-customizer

dbarron

There's also an option to clr-boot-manager to confirm booting of a new kernel. Whether it really does anything, I'm not sure 😉 (always wondered)
However, I've had no problems with updating kernels, but I'm not running Solus at the moment so can't step by step you.

grumbly

I'm so confused. Why do I have to install and use grub and grub-customizer? There's already a boot manager complete with menu (pressing spacebar on boot) but it only lists (Solus 4.0 Fortitude) with boot options that load the 4x kernel. I was going ahead with manually adding a grub boot entry after installing grub, but after more reading I think my UEFI installation of Solus is incompatible with grub, which is why grub wasn't even there. I need to find a UEFI way to do what you are suggesting. Thoughts?

grumbly

Okay, after even more reading I don't know if grub and UEFI is incompatible or not. I'll try to manually add entries using grub-customizer since it only sees my Win10 installation at present.
Values I'm using for grub-customizer 4x kernel, which should boot okay if I did it right:
Name: Solus 4x
Type: Linux
Partition: /dev/nmve0n1p6 (ext4)
Initial ramdisk: /boot/EFI/com.solus-project/initrd-com.solus-project.current.4.20.16-112
Linux image: /boot/EFI/com.solus-project/kernel-com.solus-project.current.4.20.16-112
Kernel params: <unsure what to put here>

Unfortunately, grub-customizer won't let me continue because it says it can't build the boot sequence due to errors in the parameters. I'll reboot, write down the current boot params, then come back and try those in the Kernel params field.

dbarron

If installed in UEFI mode, there is no grub installed with Solus.

viyoriya

grumbly
for more details
man clr-boot-manager
and the code base
https://github.com/clearlinux/clr-boot-manager

im not familiar with UEFI boot option and i never used
may be dbarron and [deleted] can help you....

[deleted]

dbarron is right. Solus uses systemd-boot with UEFI systems instead of grub.
Herre ist my /boot/loader/Solus-current-5.1.14-121.conf (im on UEFI as well):
title Solus 4.0 Fortitude linux /EFI/com.solus-project/kernel-com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121 initrd /EFI/com.solus-project/initrd-com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121 options root=PARTUUID=48aacc00-dafc-4fe9-831c-d8fc19b433e0 quiet loglevel=3 splash systemd.show_status=false rw radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1 resume=UUID=427c0235-9286-40fc-815e-c212690d4123

maybe that helps a bit.

viyoriya

[deleted] i guess the UUID's are your HDD/SSD drive id's it doesnt match others...

try to find the UUID's with lsblk
lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL,UUID

grumbly

@[deleted] @viyoriya @dbarron Thank you all for the pointers and suggestions! I think this is closer to finding the issue.
My EFI paths look different than yours:

├── efi -> /boot/EFI
├── EFI
│   ├── Boot
│   │   └── BOOTX64.EFI
│   ├── com.solus-project
│   │   ├── initrd-com.solus-project.current.4.20.16-112
│   │   ├── initrd-com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121
│   │   ├── kernel-com.solus-project.current.4.20.16-112
│   │   └── kernel-com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121
│   └── systemd
│       └── systemd-bootx64.efi
└── loader
    ├── entries
    │   ├── Solus-current-4.20.16-112.conf
    │   └── Solus-current-5.1.14-121.conf
    └── loader.conf

and the contents of my loader.conf is only:

default Solus-current-5.1.14-121

What puzzles me is that when I edit the boot options while booting, I simply change the 4x kernel initrd path to the 5x one (spelling triple checked!) and it fails to boot. I'm pretty lost because I'm still learning about UEFI - it seems not as straightforward as plain grub that I'm more used to.

To be clear, from the above it looks to me like it should be booting 5x kernel, but the boot params and uname -r output show I'm running the 4x kernel:

$ uname -r
4.20.16-112.current

and clr-boot-manager has no clue either

$ clr-boot-manager list-kernels
* com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121
  com.solus-project.current.4.20.16-112

What does clr-boot-manager specifically do? Maybe that is messing up and not editing the right files.

viyoriya

grumbly
clr-boot-manager keeps last 2 kernels and clear/remove old kernels....you are just listing the available kernels (list-kernels arg)

grumbly

viyoriya More than just listing kernels, I would also assume the '*' means default booting kernel, which it's obviously confused about. clr-boot-manager set-kernel com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121 does nothing. What is it supposed to do? What files is it supposed to be touching? I would like to try doing it manually.

grumbly

Okay, I read through the C source for clr-boot-manager (CBM), and discovered it's a utility that has rewritten the necessary code to interface with any of 3 bootloaders: grub, systemd-boot, and syslinux/extlinux depending what you have installed. It's a pretty nifty tool. By searching my system I found that there is no syslinux configuration present, no grub configuration present, but there are systemd-boot configs present. And indeed the files in /boot/EFI/loader/ have the same md5 fingerprint as those in /usr/lib/systemd/boot/efi, which is one of the places CBM modifies files. So in conclusion my installation of Solus is using systemd as the boot loader. Whew! @viyoriya great minds think alike!

Inspecting boot config through systemd tools shows nothing amiss I think:

$ bootctl --path=/boot
System:
     Firmware: UEFI 2.50 (Lenovo 0.4864)
  Secure Boot: disabled
   Setup Mode: user

Current Loader:
      Product: systemd-boot 239
          ESP: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/2ff14a93-5bfd-4b8b-b897-18b4dede1e4f
         File: └─/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

Boot Loader Binaries:
          ESP: /boot
         File: └─/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi (systemd-boot 239)
No default/fallback boot loader installed in ESP.

Boot Loader Entries in EFI Variables:
        Title: Windows Boot Manager
           ID: 0x0000
       Status: active, boot-order
    Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/2ff14a93-5bfd-4b8b-b897-18b4dede1e4f
         File: └─/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

Default Boot Entry:
        title: Solus 4.0 Fortitude (Solus-current-5.1.14-121)
        linux: /EFI/com.solus-project/kernel-com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121
       initrd: /EFI/com.solus-project/initrd-com.solus-project.current.5.1.14-121
      options: root=PARTUUID=c7cb979e-4b65-4a28-95f8-4cf759f988c9 quiet loglevel=3 splash systemd.show_status=false rw radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1 resume=UUID=65e3c9b8-a901-4d6f-abe1-6789b80c8a3e

grumbly

YAY solved! I'm now running 5x kernel. Turns out /boot was a decoy. I don't know why it's there, but I had to manually mount my EFI partition and it had different contents than /boot. Using the systemd tools directly and editing conf files and manually copying kernel/initrd files over I was able to manually force the boot loader to do what I wanted. All is well. The only annoying this is I couldn't keep the 4x kernel around because my EFI partition is <100M and each kernel is aobut 1/3 of that space, so I had to take remove the 4x kernel and replace it with the 5x kernel.
Does anyone know how to tell clr-boot-manager where the EFI partition is, or how to pass the right flags to bootctl? I'll try auto mounting my EFI part to /boot and see if that fixes it too.
Thanks for all your help; I learned a lot today.

kyrios

grumbly clr-boot-manager unmount the /boot partion when the system is booted, this is the expected behaviour.

Special care is taken to ensure the boot partition is handled gracefully, and in the instance that it is not already mounted, then clr-boot-manager will automatically discover and mount it, and automatically unmount the boot partition again when it is complete.

And the EFI partition size should be 512Mb if you want to avoid problems.

deeamboh

Sorry to wake up this sleeping dog, but, I still don't see a solution to this problem. I've found a lot of posts all over the net about this exact issue and it seems to me that it hasn't been solved yet. So in my opinion, we are losing a lot of bros and sis's because most have not been able to boot into solus cleanly after installs. Somebody, do something. Maybe I should start a new thread and highlight all the links I have found of this issue.

And if someone found a solution, pllease share and edit to solved.

Justin

deeamboh The fact that until you nobody else has brought this thread back seems to indicate that there aren't many people at all facing this issue.

I'd start a new thread to discuss your specific issue.

deeamboh

Ok, will do. Thanks.

hakimjonas

I am facing it right now

mck

I am facing the same problem right now. Since the discussion here is dead I provide a link to the new thread where you can search for updates:
https://discuss.getsol.us/d/10395-automatic-kernel-update-constantly-fails-with-no-errors