Ubuntu-Studio 24.04 won't re-boot without significant coaxing

[dondidge]

Greetings,

I have not been booting between the two. I do not have that option. I never see a menu about choice when booting, (a GRUB menu?), (I presume that is what would give me a choice).
When I turn on the machine, nothing is displayed on the screen. I (normally) hit the left 'Shift' key a dozen times or so, then when the backlight goes out on the display, (in seven or eight seconds I suppose), I pause a couple of seconds and then hit Fn +F2 repeatedly just before and after the backlight comes back on, and it will generally boot by itself from there.
As far as I know, nothing operationally has changed for me since I made the last change I'm talking about here.
I'm sorry if I'm being confusing. I don't mean to be.
Thanks again,
Don

[oldfred]

There are two menus.
One is UEFI one time menu, same as you use to boot USB flash drive/live installer.
And other is grub menu.

UEFI menu requires you to press the correct key often f12, but Lenovo seems to not always be consistent. Check manual.
With one install, grub normally does not show as it assumes you just want to boot that install.

With UEFI, you can press Escape key just after UEFI/BIOS screen but before grub menu would normally appear. Often have to try more than once.
And if UEFI fast boot is on, that assumes you have made no system changes and immediately boots. Then no time to press any key.

Best to have UEFI fast boot off, when making changes. But once configuration finalized you can turn it back on.
You can get back into UEFI settings from grub, command line or total cold boot (full power down). Warm reboot uses fast startup.

[dondidge]

Greetings oldfred,

There are two menus.
One is UEFI one time menu, same as you use to boot USB flash drive/live installer.
And other is grub menu.

UEFI menu requires you to press the correct key often f12, but Lenovo seems to not always be consistent. Check manual.
With one install, grub normally does not show as it assumes you just want to boot that install.

With UEFI, you can press Escape key just after UEFI/BIOS screen but before grub menu would normally appear. Often have to try more than once.
And if UEFI fast boot is on, that assumes you have made no system changes and immediately boots. Then no time to press any key.

OK, thank you for making it clear to me what to call which menu, that makes it easier to talk about this stuff.
So I'll start over in describing my 'problem'.
When I turn on the laptop, I can tell that the power is on only because the keyboard backlight lights up, and the screen backlight lights up, but there is no information displayed on the screen (usually), no logo for Lenovo or Ubuntu. Not even a mouse cursor.
(I say 'usually' because on the extremely rare occurrence that I wait for it, and my waiting is prompted by my having run some command of some kind like even 'grub-install -V', sometimes it then boots by itself, but then it won't do that again a second time.)
When it does boot by itself, I usually do get all three of the computer logo, Ubuntu logo, and even a mouse cursor, but only for a couple of tenths of a second.)

Typically when I'm just waiting to see if it will boot, the screen backlight will go off for a few seconds after several, maybe ten seconds, and then come back on, but nothing else will happen.
So I started intervening to see if I could 'trick' it into booting. That's when I discovered the left shift key, and then the Fn + F2 sequences to let me in. That still mostly works. Sometimes it takes two or three times to get booted up, but once in awhile, it'll boot up completely by itself, (if I just wait for it. Mostly though it's just waiting for Godot, (the man who never comes)).
I'm lost. I don't know what makes a computer do one thing one time only and then (virtually) never come back to that sequence.

Thank you,
Don

[tea for one]

How about a bit of an adventure?

and lastly the 'Live' USB drive itself, (identified by USB drive manufacturer's brand name)
When I select the USB drive manually, it will boot to the 'Try' or 'Install' 'Live' menu

You should be able to set this option as default i.e. always boot external usb device first
(if a usb is not attached, then your PC firmware will try the second priority e.g. an nvme disk)

If you manage to set USB device as first boot priority, you can create a bootable usb containing rEFInd.
Nothing will be altered on your internal disk unless you install rEFInd later.
https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html > A USB Flash Drive Image File
A USB with rEFInd for emergency use may help to find and boot an OS (if Grub is damaged/not responding)

Options include:-
(a) Boot the kernel directly
e.g. Boot boot\vmlinuz-6.8.0-36-lowlatency

(b) Find and boot the grub efi file
e.g. Boot EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi from 510 MiB FAT volume

(c) Start an EFI shell
The boot instructions are similar to this:-
Identify your Efi System Partition e.g. FSO
Type FSO: i.e. FSO and colon symbol (press enter)
Then type \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi (and hit enter)

Try Option (a) first - screenshot attached

[oldfred]

+1 tea for one's post on rEFInd.

I have an old USB flash drive that was too small for anything. 256MB.
But rEFInd fit on that, so I have that flash drive with rEFInd as one of my emergency boot flash drives. Although now using mostly SSDs as external boot devices.
The rEFInd flash drive saved me several times when my older UEFI system did not like too many drives with UEFI boot. It would lock up and not boot anything. And rEFInd then was the only bootable device.

[dondidge]

Greetings,

I discovered that even if I don't have anything plugged into a USB port, hitting Fn + F12 (slightly furiously) after the screen backlight goes out that first time, (after five to seven seconds?), the machine will boot and land me in the installed version of Ubuntu-Studio 24.04.
I can deal with that little detour.
Things work.
I thank you for your help in moving this along, but I think I'm going to leave it here for now.
I somehow thought this was going to be trivial to fix.
Where it is at now though is simple to deal with and I can live with it working this way.
Maybe it'll sort itself out in August when the first update comes out. I can wait until then, and revisit it if it doesn't get fixed automatically then.
Thank you for helping me.
You've been much more responsive than other OS providers!
Best to all,
Don