Booting a Snapshot fails with: "error: null src bitmap grub_video_bitmap_create_scaled"

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

this is my first post in this forum. Just to introduce shortly myself, I have used Linux partly since about 20 years and started with a SUSE 5.1 :). My main system is still windows 10 but my girl-friend is fully under linux and is a fan of Manjaro.
She had some issues during an interruption of installing an update, which crashes the installation and forced her to reinstall the system. This motivated me to start a comparison of the behavior exactly in this situation between different distributions in a VM environment. So one of my tested distros was SUSE Leap 15.0, where I really liked the approach to install the system by default with btrfs and also integrate to take snapshots at certain points automatically. At my point of view this could save your live in critical situations.
BUT:

  • I was not able to boot such a snapshot in a VM and a little laptop which I used for testing
  • Grub was every time canceled with “error: null src bitmap grub_video_bitmap_create_scaled”
  • After searching around a little bit and found the openQA page of SUSE … impressive that everybody can see their tests and results … really really good
  • I also found a test called “boot_to_snapshot” which has the status “soft-failed” … OK, I thought great they are aware of my issue
  • I looked a little bit deeper into the test … the test fails because of a not readable timestamp in grub … BUT what about the feature to restart into a snapshot? >:(

Here the link to the test: https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/759777#step/grub_test/8
I also found somewhere a hint to turn grub into text mode. This fails, too because after selecting the snapshot grub turns back to graphical mode and I get the same error.
Searching in this forum also leads not to a solution. Strange that nobody has this issue except of me … could also be that my searching was not correct.

Do anyone knows how I can forward this behavior to SUSE that they can extend their tests and fix this bug?

Thank you in advance.
Felix

2

Perhaps someone can test this, too and can confirm it or am I the only one with this behavior?

3

BTRFS shanpshots are filesystemsnapshots, not snapshots like one can take from a VM. So, you cannot boot a btrfs snapshot in some VM or on other hardware.

4

Hi,

to be honest I do not really know what you want to tell me.
I have the error on a VM (VirtualBox) and my real laptop.
In both systems I cannot start a btrfs-snapshot with grub.

Here are the steps to repeat in some screenshots:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18tY8n_6XE-8M67h3Kl4gJemyL5mDUuhT?usp=sharing

Thank you.

5

Hi,

I think we will not come to a solution here. It seems that no-one else has this issue.
Thread can be closed.
Thank you.

6

Even if my answer comes too late, I can understand your frustration, because I had the same problem. Actually, it’s easy to solve.

That’s why I don’t understand why no one could help you. :\

On screenshot 3 you must take the second entry to boot the selected snapshot. The first entry contains only a grub menu info, without any parameters. This can’t work. The first entry confused me at first too.