Upgrade 15.2 to 15.3 will not run except in recovery mode

English Install/Boot/Login
1

After discovering that 15.2 had already hit end-of-life, I followed the procedure and upgraded to 15.3.

I am encountering a couple of problems. The first I suspect is settings in Thunderbird, but don’t have a clue what is going on with this problem:

When I try to run 15.3 in normal mode (not recovery), it will start but then freeze with this message “A start job is running for /dev/disk/by uuid/ata-WDC-WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0_WD-WCC6N4UH4NTJ-part3 (3min 30s / no limit)”.

I have three partitions on my hard drive, a small one automatically made, a big one (1.1Tb) for OpenSUSE Leap, a somewhat smaller (and as of now, unused partition - blank and unformatted) partition where I planned on putting W10, and a small one for swap.

When the message in line 3 pops up (watching the boot sequence), it always freezes there, even though the timer keeps incrementing. I CAN reboot with Ctl-Alt-Delete.

When I start in recovery mode, that message doesn’t pop up and as long as I don’t start Thunderbird, I can use the computer. (I think I know what I have to do to fix that.)

I should add that I had some difficulty doing the upgrade. When I used the instructions for pre-downloading the files, I got a pop-up message that switch didn’t work. The system had some issues and for a while, I could only get a screen with an older version of 15.3.

My thinking is that for some reason, 15.3 is looking for software on the blank section of the disk, and without a maximum timeout, just goes into a wait loop.

Any help to fix this would be greatly appreciated!

Bob

2

Please provide using code tags input/output from:

lsblk -f
cat /etc/fstab
cat /proc/cmdline
3

sblk -f

NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINT
sda mpath_
├─sda1
│ none
├─sda2
│ btrfs 89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b
├─sda3
│ swap 1 a5bd1cc2-3a15-43b1-84c4-14a307e671a5
├─sda4
│ none
└─WDC_WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0_WD-WCC6N4VH4NTJ

├─WDC_WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0_WD-WCC6N4VH4NTJ-part1
│
├─WDC_WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0_WD-WCC6N4VH4NTJ-part2
│ btrfs 89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b 450.7G 56% /tmp
├─WDC_WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0_WD-WCC6N4VH4NTJ-part3
│ swap 1 a5bd1cc2-3a15-43b1-84c4-14a307e671a5 [SWAP]
└─WDC_WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0_WD-WCC6N4VH4NTJ-part4

bob@localhost:~> cat /etc/fstab

UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b / btrfs defaults 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /var btrfs subvol=/@/var 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /usr/local btrfs subvol=/@/usr/local 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /tmp btrfs subvol=/@/tmp 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /srv btrfs subvol=/@/srv 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /root btrfs subvol=/@/root 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /opt btrfs subvol=/@/opt 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /home btrfs subvol=/@/home 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi btrfs subvol=/@/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /boot/grub2/i386-pc btrfs subvol=/@/boot/grub2/i386-pc 0 0
UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b /.snapshots btrfs subvol=/@/.snapshots 0 0
UUID=a5bd1cc2-3a15-43b1-84c4-14a307e671a5 swap swap defaults 0 0

bob@localhost:~> cat /proc/cmdline

BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.3.18-150300.59.60-default root=UUID=89766f9c-fb4e-459d-9b02-1203b26e629b

4

You did not use CODE tags, as requested. That makes your output harder to read.

It looks as if the holdup is with swap, perhaps with attempting a resume from hiberbating. Recovery mode does not attempt that.

Please provide the output from:


grep resume /etc/default/grub

You may need root access to use that command (or put an “sudo” in front of the command).

You can use CODE tags:

[noparse]


 paste output here

[/noparse]

5 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash=silent resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0_WD-WCC6N4VH4NTJ-part3 mitigations=auto quiet"

This is the first time I’ve heard of “Code Tags”.

6

Try this test: At the Grub menu with default menu selection highlighted, strike the E key, find the string that begins resume=whatever, change it to noresume, then proceed to boot via the instruction at the bottom of the screen. Do you get a normal boot?

7

Well, for the first time 15.3 booted normally. So I guess I need to do the editing to remove that switch?

Thanks for helping!

8

Not remove, adjust. It needs to match the entry in /etc/fstab to enable resume, or normally boot. Edit /etc/default/grub, then regenerate grub.cfg. Alternatively, if you don’t ever suspend to disk, you could replace the resume=whatever in /etc/default/grub with noresume before regenerating.

It’s unusual to see resume=/dev/disk/by-id/whatever. Usually it’s resume=UUID=whatever. It also can be resume=LABEL=whatever, where LABEL refers to filesystem label that you may set to anything you please on any or all filesystems, subject to a length and special characters limitation.

9

Before changing anything, I would suggest you check whether you actually have swap. Perhaps the device specified in “/etc/fstab” and in “/etc/default/grub” is wrong.

What’s the output from:

free

and what’s the output from:

cat /proc/swaps
10 

bob@localhost:~> free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:       16301760     3304956     5254532      715340     7742272    11945444
Swap:       2097216           0     2097216
bob@localhost:~> cat /proc/swaps
Filename                Type        Size    Used    Priority
/dev/dm-3                               partition    2097216    0    -2

Since I made the change, I’ve had two minor problems - Thunderbird and Firefox locking up. However, that appears to be a loose connection in the ethernet. Otherwise, the upgrade now seems to be complete and OK.

I really appreciate the help!!!

Bob

11

It is good that you still have swap. However, your swap device does not seem to match what was in the “resume=” parameter.

What’s the output from:

grep swap /etc/fstab
12 

UUID=a5bd1cc2-3a15-43b1-84c4-14a307e671a5  swap                    swap   defaults                      0  0
13

botched, not enough time to get right

14

10 minutes isn’t long enough.

What is output from lsinitrd /boot/initrd | grep resume and grep resume /etc/default/grub and grep resume /boot/grub2/grub.cfg?

15

That’s from “fstab”. You previously posted a line from “/etc/default/grub”

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“splash=silent resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0_WD-WCC6N4VH4NTJ-part3 mitigations=auto quiet”

You need to change that to match what is in “/etc/fstab”.

You can change that line to:


GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash=silent  resume=UUID=a5bd1cc2-3a15-43b1-84c4-14a307e671a5 mitigations=auto quiet"

After making that change, and while still running as root:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

and that should fix your booting problem.

16

Well, thanks everyone for the help! That solved the problem (plus it seems some other minor issues).

BTW - I used YAST to make the changes. For some reason, command line wouldn’t work.

Bob