"_" after update and restart

InFamousM

I did normal update and restarted my laptop (levono B50). Now i'm watching "_" on black screen and nothing is happening. Did the update broke the OS or what, and how i fix it. Can i reinstall slos with out formating the hdd. This is the second time this happend first was "FIXED" with total wipe and installation of solus

healBvdb

Same here. Checking here for the moment https://getsol.us/articles/troubleshooting/boot-rescue/en/

InFamousM

Let my know what happens and what you did.

akrenz

Please see https://discuss.getsol.us/d/4881-recent-update-switched-to-lts-kernel-boot-fails-manual-steps-required

Maybe you are also running on lts kernel (per accident or by configuration). Switching from LTS to current kernel should solve your Problem. Otherwise you will need to wait for the fix to land in stable repo.

KingLucius

you can revert the update via:

login to TTY (Alt+Ctrl+F2)
sudo eopkg hs
see the last update took which number, for example if last update process number is 12 then..
sudo eopkg hs -t 11

There is no need to reinstalling anything.

InFamousM

TTY?

akrenz

InFamousM Switching to another virtual console (tty = console)

InFamousM

But i have to be loaded in OS for virtual console?

akrenz

InFamousM If your screen is showing you the blinkging underscore ("_") and you can switch to another virtual console via CTRL+ALT+F2 most (except of the GUI part) of the system was successfully loaded/started. Then you can try to login and repair the system from there on.

akrenz

I now had the same issue as you on one of my devices. So i started looking a little bit closer:

TL;DR
It looks like gdm (if you are running Gnome) cannot start a X-Session because of the Graphics Card interface /dev/dri/card0 not available early enough. Restarting gdm via "sudo systemctl restart gdm" fixed it for me. This error does not happen if I just restart the system. System needs to really shutdown and started again (cold boot).

Long Story:
I had the same issue as mentioned in the first post on my Lenovo Yoga 370 (running an Intel core i5-7300u. But system was accessable via ssh and Virtual Console was also available. So I looked at the boot log (check the full log here)
I think the root cause is the startup of gdm-x-session sowing that it cannot find /dev/dri/card0. This is available after boot, but (looks like) not at the time gdm tries to create an x-session. By restarting gdm it can now create the session (since /dev/dri/card0 is already available).

I think it's related to the update of xorg intel video driver or kernel from 12th June. eopkg history shows me that xorg-driver-video-intel and kernel had been updated (intel driver mainly just as a rebuild against newer kernel):

I will look further if I can solve this issue.

akrenz

I think I found the root cause for my error:

My device has two partitions /dev/nvme0n1p1 (boot) and /dev/nvme0n1p2 (luks encrypted root partition). So clr-boot-manager should mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 on /boot before doing any operation. Debugging with sudo CBM_DEBUG=1 clr-boot-manager update showed that it did not mount this partition because it detected that /boot is not empty. /boot inside my luks partition contained all images generated from the previous eopkg update/install steps. The real boot partition (/dev/nvme0n1p1) contained an old 5.6.4-152 and 5.6.13-153 initramfs and loading 5.6.4 by default. This old kernel did not load the graphics driver in time for XServer to detect /dev/dri/card0 which caused gdm to fail on boot.
Why it did start working on my luks-boot folder...I do not know....
This should not be the case and I do not know why it should do that. So I guess it was my fault tinkering with the system somewhere in the past. But I really cannot remember...

This is how I repaired it:
Removed anything from /boot (inside my luks partition). Mounted /dev/nvme0n1p1 on /boot and run
sudo dracut --regenerate-all and sudo clr-boot-manager update.
Now system boots just fine into gdm login screen.

brent

You went from troubleshooting the intel driver to the encrypted drive by finding out one kernel would not load the driver due to clutter. Good intuition, and methodical steps. I love successful troubleshooting threads---this will definitely help somebody.

xvdd

Hi all,

I'm using a default Gnome Solus setup with luks, on a Lenovo laptop (720s) and I'm also having a gdm issue (blinking "_" on a black screen) at startup since the 5.10 kernel upgrade.
I can login either by selecting a 5.6 kernel or 5.10 by switching to console and killing gdm (it restarts in graphic mode then).

@akrenz analysis seems to apply to my case except I am sure I did not tinkered with /boot or mounted partition on this setup anytime before.

Shouldn't a fix be available at the distribution upgrade level or upstream eventually?
I'm not entirely comfortable to touch /boot and run the mentioned commands.