In the last 3 weeks or so I had 4 issues with booting after having done an update. I always update by opening TTY1, log in as root, use zypper dup, exit and reboot.
The first time it happened I didn’t know what to do so I just re-installed, keeping my home partition in tact, making the process of setting things up after the install very quick.
When it happened again I started using the boot menu on the USB stick. I chose More, followed by booting the system. After having answered some questions about type of keyboard and from where to boot, it just booted from hard disk. I then opened Yast and in there the Boot loader section. Didn’t see anything strange so I just changed the time before boot and let the system create a new boot system. From then on I could boot normally again.
I looked in the Journal entries through Yast but the only thing which was strange to me was the fact that after the first boot attempt it says: “Journal ended”, and 2 seconds later I booted from my USB stick. Well, I can tell you it took much longer than 2 seconds to find and mount the stick, switch off and on the computer again (cause reboot didn’t work). But maybe the time was frozen so the clock didn’t advance during that time.
When I boot, when it doesn’t work, I just see the name GRUB followed by a blinking _ at the top left of a black screen.
Has anyone else experienced this as well? The computer works well now, but I just wonder what it might be that caused it.
That is a good idea. Thing is I never see the boot menu but I will let it be shown when this happens again. More however, I would like to find out what is causing it so it won’t happen again.
Thank you Karl, but my laptop is pre EFI. The boot menu doesn’t contain any reference to it at all.
It has never before done this and now suddenly a couple of times in the last weeks, every time after I installed updates. Not after every update, but some of them.
I now know how to make the machine run again so I better leave it at that. I will also try the possibility of the rescue menu in Grub itself to see if I can boot with another kernel. If not, I will use the trick with the USB again.
Tty1 is very slightly special compared to the others. I never use it purposely, unless I have 2-5 tied up with other things and need a sixth. Why not give one of the others a try instead for doing your dups, maybe #2, which is the first available when one is needed whilst running the installer?
As to why it’s special, I don’t know, but I do know that on Fedora and/or when using GDM, that’s where X runs GDM & Gnome, if not any or every other DE. Some other distros have followed Fedora’s lead at least with GDM/Gnome, which I never use on any distro. I do remember some crashing bug in the past year or two only appearing when using tty1, but not where or any details that would help me locate it.