it seems that today’s update to kernel 3.8.0 causes some serious trouble, at least with my Zenbook UX31A.
I’m using a more or less standard Tumbleweed installation originally upgraded from 12.2 DVD in UEFI mode. Today I did not pay attention while running the weekly update thus the new kernel got installed. The update showed no error, so I rebooted the Zenbook.
Now after reboot and entering the system password, the screen stays blank, there’s no way to enter the BIOS and no way of booting from DVD or USB. In fact it seems that the Zenbook has to be returned to repair.
Any help is appreciated and caution is advised for any Zenbook users before upgrading.
On Sat 23 Feb 2013 04:56:01 PM CST, dtbaumann wrote:
Hi,
it seems that today’s update to kernel 3.8.0 causes some serious
trouble, at least with my Zenbook UX31A.
I’m using a more or less standard Tumbleweed installation originally
upgraded from 12.2 DVD in UEFI mode. Today I did not pay attention while
running the weekly update thus the new kernel got installed. The update
showed no error, so I rebooted the Zenbook.
Now after reboot and entering the system password, the screen stays
blank, there’s no way to enter the BIOS and no way of booting from DVD
or USB. In fact it seems that the Zenbook has to be returned to repair.
Any help is appreciated and caution is advised for any Zenbook users
before upgrading.
Bye.
Hi
Ouch Did you try disconnecting the power, then hold the power button
down for 60seconds?
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.28-2.20-desktop
up 21:06, 3 users, load average: 0.13, 0.14, 0.08
CPU Intel® i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | GPU Intel® Ironlake Mobile
On 2013-02-23 20:16, pier andreit wrote:
>
> vazhavandan;2529600 Wrote:
>> I don’t think any software other than “BIOS upgrade” can kill BIOS. Then
>> again i may be wrong
>
> I red something about bricking laptops related to some samsung laptop
> and the use of uefi…
True. It doesn’t kill the bios or the uefi, the code is there alright,
but the configuration data has impossible values and the computer locks.
For all effects, bricked, unless you find a jumper to restore that data
block, and that the jumper still works.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
On Sun 24 Feb 2013 01:18:06 AM CST, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2013-02-23 20:16, pier andreit wrote:
>
> vazhavandan;2529600 Wrote:
>> I don’t think any software other than “BIOS upgrade” can kill BIOS.
>> Then again i may be wrong
>
> I red something about bricking laptops related to some samsung laptop
> and the use of uefi…
True. It doesn’t kill the bios or the uefi, the code is there alright,
but the configuration data has impossible values and the computer locks.
For all effects, bricked, unless you find a jumper to restore that data
block, and that the jumper still works.
Hi
HP’s are good, you just need to plug in a usb device with the bios
firmware, press the <super>+B key and power up for it to restore…
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.28-2.20-desktop
up 1 day 0:27, 3 users, load average: 0.20, 0.11, 0.07
CPU Intel® i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | GPU Intel® Ironlake Mobile
On 2013-02-24 05:37, malcolmlewis wrote:
> Hi
> HP’s are good, you just need to plug in a usb device with the bios
> firmware, press the <super>+B key and power up for it to restore…
So, you can create a custom-brick-your-hp-usb stick, plug it in, and
brick any HP in sight
Or worse things a bad mind can think of
I hope they are encrypted, and use good encryption.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
I have an Asus UX31a Ivy Bridge version. I have successfully installed openSUSE 12.3 on it and it runs well. However, updating the kernel seems to be the culprit of not allowing me to boot the laptop in any way, not even to the bios. I sent it back to Asus thinking it became damaged in some way. They restored it and it worked fine until I updated again. At this point I realized that it was the software.
I opened the laptop and disconnected the hard drive. I then turn the laptop on and to my surprise I could get into the bios. I then reinserted the hard drive and was able to reinstall from a USB drive. At this point I have left it at the default 3.7.x kernel series and all is fine.
My guess is that the 3.8.x kernel and up corrupts the UEFI boot partition in some way that causes the system to lock out.
Does anyone have any more info on this bug and if there is a way to work around it to ensure it doesn’t corrupt the installation? I don’t want to upgrade my laptop’s kernel without knowing more about this. Thanks.
> Does anyone have any more info on this bug and if there is a way to
> work around it to ensure it doesn’t corrupt the installation? I don’t
> want to upgrade my laptop’s kernel without knowing more about this.
> Thanks.
I suggest you write a Bugzilla to ask kernel devs about that.
No bug is a bug until you report it in Bugzilla, you know >:-)
On 2013-07-05 10:16, DEBORAH89 wrote:
>
> So we should stick with 3.7.x kernel? Does anyone report this bug?
Nobody has said here they did - so you’d better go ahead and report. The
worst that can happen is that somebody did and they close one report as
duplicate; which is not a bad thing because it proves that there are
more people affected.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
There is a Ubuntu page on this laptop AsusZenbookPrime - Community Help Wiki and they make no mention of such behaviour - but they also do not state anything about a 3.8.0 kernel bricking/preventing from reaching BIOS with this ZenBook. They do note:
Upgrading Linux kernel manually
This step is recommended for Ubuntu 12.10 only in order to get most hardware features working.
** Just a note that can’t be explains logically, after installing the 3.8.x kernel I had issues wirh bumblebee so I removed it, but somehow the fn+f5 f6 still work for controlling the brightness! it could be also that the patch is included in the latest kernel from 12.10 if one enables proposed updates in the sources, I recommend enabling the proposed updates, upgrade, reboot and see if it works before upgrading manually**
Install (latest stable) mainline kernel for next Ubuntu version (13.04 aka. Raring Ringtail) from here: Grab all .deb-packages for your cpu architecture (most likely amd64) but don’t forget linux-headers-3.8.*_all.deb! Assuming you downloaded all these files to ~/Downloads/, execute the following two commands:
This enables function keys and proper brightness control and fixes several bugs regarding WiFi, Bluetooth and external displays.
Warning: This will disable all kernel updates of Ubuntu 12.10 (well, you now have a Ubuntu 13.04 mainline kernel, so this may be acceptable)! Mainline kernels could be incompatible with proprietary Nvidia graphics card drivers, which are needed to save power with Nvidia Optimus.
clearly there were no BIOS problems in that example.
Further to that archlinux have a page on this Zenbook: ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A - ArchWiki and they do not have anything specific to the 3.8 kernel, although they do have cautions about using the newest firmware.
I took a look at Bugzilla. There’s a lot happening there. When I attempt to start a new bug report I get, “Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.” Not sure why. I did a search for “UEFI” and only got a few hits, but nothing that seemed related to this issue.
I also looked at those pages for Arch and Ubuntu and didn’t see any issues either.
For what it’s worth, I’m only guessing at the problem here because even my worst Grub hose job has still allowed me to get to the Bios. This was the first time that a software glitch has blocked the computer from completely starting. I also should note, even if it’s somewhat unrelated, that I have a Asus 1215b running the latest 3.10 kernel and updates from KDE Factory (same setup I had on the Zenbook). Smooth sailing. The 1215b uses a basic UEFI Bios, but also doesn’t have some of the Windows Trusted computing nonsense built it as it was a Windows 7 device.
Up until now I was running the 3.10 RC’s on the Zenbook when the issues occurred. Maybe if I’m feeling brave I’ll install the new stable 3.10 kernel and see what happens.
On 2013-07-06 18:06, lakerssuperman wrote:
> I took a look at Bugzilla. There’s a lot happening there. When I
> attempt to start a new bug report I get, “Firefox has detected that the
> server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will
> never complete.” Not sure why.
That’s probably one of the login related problems that plague the forum
and bugzilla and… whatever, they use the same structure. The usual
cure is to clear all related cookies (opensuse, novell, suse, atachmate,
netiq…)
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Cleared the cookies and found success. I created a bug report. I have used Linux for a long time and have diagnosed many bugs on my computer from reading reports, but I have very rarely submitted a bug report. I apologize if it’s lacking.
On 2013-07-06 23:36, lakerssuperman wrote:
>
> Cleared the cookies and found success. I created a bug report. I have
> used Linux for a long time and have diagnosed many bugs on my computer
> from reading reports, but I have very rarely submitted a bug report. I
> apologize if it’s lacking.
>
> https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=828377
They’ll tell you if they need something more. I would post a link to
this thread, for more info.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Did you try disconnecting the power, then hold the power button
