upgrade freezes on starting udev

English Install/Boot/Login
1

My old Asus laptop is running Opensuse 42.3 and I went to upgrade to 15.1 but it just freezes on “starting udev”. Any thoughts as to what might be wrong? I would like to keep using linux on this machine if possible, but 42.3 is no longer supported so if I can’t upgrade I’m in a spot of bother!

Thanks very much.

2

As long as you do not explain what exactly you are doing and in which step you get the freezing, other then by providing the vague English term “upgrade”, helping will be a problem.

3

Hi HCVV,

I have put the installation media onto a USB disc, and have booted from it. Choosing between “installation”, “upgrade existing system” or “boot existing sytem” or something similar, I choose the “upgrade” option. Very shortly (within 5-10 seconds) I am left with a frozen/crashed system with lots of text and the last line says “starting udev”. If it would help I can take some photos from my phone and upload them to show you at what point it is crashing?

Thanks for you help.

4

Thanks, that is at least explaning what method of upgrading you are trying. It will encourage people to study your case.

5

Thanks. Please find a photo of the screen I am left with

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10u59Yl2GzbOA0WLMcQNyk83920p7Pufo

Cheers :slight_smile:

6

How old is it? 64 bit? what video chip?

Going to use EFI or MBR booting?

7

Hi, and thanks for your help.

It is approximately 4 years old, 64bit. It’s an Asus X553MA, the specs can be found here

I’m pretty sure that’s the right laptop, although mine is all black.

8

Successfully performed Windows 7 kills. Thus your system having 8.1 should work too with Leap 15.1. You may try a live system on a stick and report: http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/openSUSE-stable/live/openSUSE-Leap-15.1-KDE-Live-x86_64-Current.iso

9

Thank you, I will try a live intall when I get the chance. The laptop is running dual boot with windows 10, but I don’t think that should make a difference at such an early stage of the installation. Odd how 42.3 install worked absolutely fine, yet 15.1 won’t. Bizarre!

Thanks again.

10

I have downloaded the ISO file but yet to burn it to a drive/disc yet. If the live disc works OK, is it possible to install from within it?

Thanks!

11

Sure. Two icons are sitting on the desktop:

installation.desktop

upgrade.desktop

I have not tried them, but they are supposed to work.

BTW: You can use the Live image to experiment with. Changes are saved on the USB stick:

erlangen:~ # lsblk -f /dev/sdc
NAME   FSTYPE  LABEL                       UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINT
sdc    iso9660 openSUSE_Leap_15.1_KDE_Live 2019-08-01-16-22-40-00                              
├─sdc1 iso9660 openSUSE_Leap_15.1_KDE_Live 2019-08-01-16-22-40-00                     0   100% /run/media/karl/openSUSE_Leap_15.1_KDE_Live
├─sdc2 vfat    BOOT                        080B-F3FC                                           
└─**sdc3 ext4    cow                         cec96381-7c8a-4fe1-b809-b5b5c21f645b   54.2G     1% /run/media/karl/cow**
erlangen:~ #
12

Great, I will give this a go over the weekend.

13

I have actually just tried this. Unfortunately the live disc doesn’t work either. I have taken a picture of the screen that freezes. Any thoughts?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10zpSUg_K6Na4DUXzfEYqMB8Z3Dg82v_D/view?usp=drivesdk

14

FWIW, I saw something similar when booting from the full 15.1 install .iso image. Laptop is a very old but still reasonably fast Dell Precision M6500. Initial ramdisk boot always paused for at least 30-60 seconds on “Starting udev…” but then got past it.

Have you waited several minutes to see if it completes? Good news is that the installed system boots quickly. Sorry, can’t help on the kernel panic. That looks like a much worse problem.

15

I think I have waited for about a minute or more and it still didn’t work. Worth trying for longer then? It just had a flashing “_” which shortly stopped flashing…

16

Sorry, I can’t remember if the “_” cursor was flashing or not (or stopped flashing).

If it was me I’d try giving it 5 or 10 minutes. Come back and see if it got past it. But as my username states, I’m not an expert on this.

17

You may try another distro: Arch Linux - Downloads

18

BTW: There is advice on troubleshooting: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ASUS_X553MA#Laptop_freezes_on_boot

19

Anyone else got any other ideas? I don’t think I fancy going for another distro if I can avoid it, I have been using OpenSUSE for a good 15 years now and have been happy with it. Maybe something like Ubuntu may be worth a go…?

20
  1. online (command line) upgrade using zypper
  2. wait much, much longer, more than 20 minutes at least (it’s worked for me)
  3. try booting installation media using nomodeset
  4. instead of or in addition to nomodeset, try disabling plymouth boot by appending to kernel cmdline plymouth=0
  5. instead of or in addition to the above listed options, try vga=normal or video=1366x768 or XVideo=1366x768
  6. try other cmdline options from SDB:Linuxrc - openSUSE Wiki, e.g. disable whichever network device might not be usable, or both
  7. search the web for trouble specifically related to (your) Atom/Bay Trail CPU with integrated Intel Graphics
  8. try installing 15.0 instead of Ubuntu. If successful, run save_y2logs, then report a bug on bugzilla.opensuse.org and attach those screenshots and the saved logs from 15.0 installation so that the developers know that 15.0 installation worked, and provide hardware info about your laptop from it

Note that upgrading from 42.3 to 15.1 without upgrading to 15.0 first is “not supported”. Note too that I did online upgrades from 42.3 and older releases to 15.1 multiple times successfully and 0 times unsuccessfully, but I don’t have any Atom CPUs.