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

[dondidge]

Greetings,

I recently installed Ubuntu-Studio 24.04 on my Lenovo Flex 7i bought last October, 2023, using an Ubuntu_Studio Live USB drive. (The computer had Win 11 on it originally, but when I installed Ubuntu-Studio, I had the installation wipe the drive.)

So my situation is odd. After installing 24.04, it works quite well, but I can’t boot it up a second time almost ever.
If I just ‘turn it on’ it won’t boot. (I presume this is obviously because I don’t know what I’m doing here yet, and that's why I’m asking for help.

I did notice that if I hit certain keys, it would boot once in awhile. I tried to figure out a pattern, and realized that I should hit the left shift key numerous times when it first powers up, stopping when the screen backlight goes off.

Then almost as soon as the backlight goes off, if I then hit Fn + F2 several times before the screen backlight goes on again, the majority of the time, the computer will boot and act like a normal computer within ten seconds or so. How this works, or why it works, is beyond me, but at least I can still usually get into the machine easily.

I invoked LVM for partition management during the install, and downloaded extra codecs, and the drive is a 1TB SSD.

I downloaded, and ran boot-repair (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair) and got that printout and attached it below.

I thank you in advance for your help. I am very appreciative of getting into Linux after having been a computer user since the late seventies. It kind of makes this all new again, and I like that a lot.

Here's my Boot-Info_20240629_1728.txt link Boot-Info_20240629_1728.txt.

Thanks,
Don


Operating System: Ubuntu Studio 24.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.11
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13
Kernel Version: 6.8.0-36-lowlatency (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11


Processors: 12 × 13th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-1355U
Memory: 15.2 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® Graphics
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 82Y2
System Version: Lenovo Flex 7 14IRU8

[tea for one]

Some Lenovo devices have other security options in the UEFI settings.
Perhaps, have a look around to see if you can disable something to eliminate "significant coaxing"

Double check the following (if present):-
TPM (Trusted Platform Module)
PTT (Platform Trust Technology)
FTPM (Firmware Trusted Platform Module)
TPT (Trust Platform Technology)
Device Guard (some Lenovo devices)
OS Optimised Defaults (some Lenovo devices)
Lock UEFI BIOS Settings
Boot Order Lock
Enable Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA

Secondly, with reference to the boot-repair report, this comment was a surprise:-
Line 228 - The default repair of the Boot-Repair utility would not act on the boot

Finally, the info from /etc/default/grub was missing in the report.

Anyway, I would suggest that you examine your UEFI settings first, because your PC does boot intermittently with gentle persuasion.

[dondidge]

Greetings,

Thanks for your quick reply.
I found that PTT Platform Trust Technology was enabled, and I disabled it. It didn't seem to matter.
I found that Device Guard was enabled, and I disabled it. It didn't seem to matter.
I found that Secure Boot was enabled, I disabled it, things seemed to get worse, although I can't describe how at this point, so I re-enabled it, and that's how it is now.
Intel Virtualization is enabled. Intel VT-d is also enabled (also part of virtualization)
I can still get it to boot most of the time. I can't honestly tell if it's gotten easier, more difficult, or is unchanged in how easily I can get into it.

"Finally the info from /etc/default/grub was missing."

Sorry about that. I guess I don't know where to find or how to generate that info.

This may not matter at all, but there was a brief point in time when this machine had both Ubuntu-Studio and Windows 11 on it. I selected the option to erase the hard drive when re-installing Ubuntu-Studio a couple of times since then. It is possible that installer left something behind that it shouldn't have? (Pure conjecture, I admit)

Anyway, thanks again for your help. We haven't found it yet.
Don

[tea for one]

I found that Secure Boot was enabled, I disabled it, things seemed to get worse, although I can't describe how at this point, so I re-enabled it, and that's how it is now.

Line 59 - Your boot-repair report stated that Secure Boot was disabled

I can still get it to boot most of the time. I can't honestly tell if it's gotten easier, more difficult, or is unchanged in how easily I can get into it.

Yes, sometimes, it is very difficult to tell if a UEFI setting is a help or hindrance.

Sorry about that. I guess I don't know where to find or how to generate that info.

You do not generate the /etc/grub/default independently, boot-repair report does it for you.
The fact that the info was missing is the surprise i.e. why did boot-repair produce an incomplete report?

This may not matter at all, but there was a brief point in time when this machine had both Ubuntu-Studio and Windows 11 on it. I selected the option to erase the hard drive when re-installing Ubuntu-Studio a couple of times since then. It is possible that installer left something behind that it shouldn't have? (Pure conjecture, I admit)

Very unlikely, if the disk was erased.
Creating a new partition table (GPT) is often a useful solution to remove everything

Anyway, thanks again for your help. We haven't found it yet.

Not yet, still cogitating

I have the germ of an idea in my tiny brain box.
Firstly, does your PC always successfully boot to a live "Try Ubuntu" session? (i.e. without coaxing)

[dondidge]

Greetings,

Firstly, does your PC always successfully boot to a live "Try Ubuntu" session? (i.e. without coaxing)

That's a good question. Basically no.
It found and booted from the Live USB once by itself that I'm aware of, but mostly I have to do the Fn + F12 thing to get it to come up with a boot menu. (In the BIOS, 'Boot from USB' is enabled, but I guess it doesn't think it's bootable.)
When the boot menu appears, the alternatives are Ubuntu, which doesn't work, (being the thing I'm trying to get fixed, I presume), Hynix (the hard drive) which also doesn't work, 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.
It seems like sometimes from there, it somehow ends up in the installed version of Linux on the hard drive. (I think that's the case anyway, otherwise I don't think Firefox would remember any of my tabs, nor would the system remember my mouse preferences. Does that make sense?)

Thank you,
Don

[oldfred]

While report on boot order line 62 shows Ubuntu as first in boot order, I wonder if it still is trying to boot Windows.
Some systems, HP typically, require you to change boot order in UEFI settings, not from UEFI one time boot menu.

Some older systems would also only boot "Windows Boot Manager" in UEFI. But they did not check actual boot file, so we created a new "Window" boot entry that booted using Ubuntu/grub's shimx64.efi for UEFI boot. Shim works if Secure boot on or off.

You can delete 0000 entry for Windows and create a new one.
Check that 0000 is correct entry to delete.
Noted that new version of efibootmgr -v seems to output much more detail where old efibootmgr only entry only showed names. But new efibootmgr only shows details of partUUID/GUID so we know which ESP your are using to boot.
sudo efibootmgr
or
sudo efibootmgr -v
Delete
sudo efibootmgr -b XXXX -B #where XXXX is entry you want to delete.

See also
man efibootmgr

To add a Windows entry to boot Ubuntu.
The efibootmgr assumes default of sda1 for ESP, so you have to specify if any other location for ESP.
Create new Windows entry that boots shim.
sudo efibootmgr -c -L "Windows Boot Manager" -l "\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi" -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 1

UEFI uses partUUID to know ESP to use. You can see the partuuid is different in old Windows entry & ubuntu entry. So we can see you created new ESP for UEFI boot files. Or old Windows entry has no use now.

[dondidge]

Greetings,

sudo efibootmgr -v

sudo efibootmgr -b 0000 -B

sudo efibootmgr -c -L "Windows Boot Manager" -l "\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi" -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 1

I believe I followed through on this correctly. Here is a console printout of what happened.

didge@didge-Lenovo-Flex-7-14IRU8:~$ sudo efibootmgr -v
[sudo] password for didge:
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0001,0013,0014,0015,0016,0017
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,4a550efe-8ca1-4e80-a22c-4cd585abc4a4,0x800,0x219800)/File(\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi)
dp: 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 98 21 00 00 00 00 00 fe 0e 55 4a a1 8c 80 4e a2 2c 4c d5 85 ab c4 a4 02 02
/ 04 04 34 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 75 00 62 00 75 00 6e 00 74 00 75 00 5c 00 73 00 68 00 69 00 6d 00 78 00 36 00 34 00 2e 00 65
00 66 00 69 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0001* Ubuntu HD(1,GPT,4a550efe-8ca1-4e80-a22c-4cd585abc4a4,0x800,0x219800)/File(\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi)
dp: 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 98 21 00 00 00 00 00 fe 0e 55 4a a1 8c 80 4e a2 2c 4c d5 85 ab c4 a4 02 02
/ 04 04 34 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 75 00 62 00 75 00 6e 00 74 00 75 00 5c 00 73 00 68 00 69 00 6d 00 78 00 36 00 34 00 2e 00 65
00 66 00 69 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0010 Setup FvFile(721c8b66-426c-4e86-8e99-3457c46ab0b9)
dp: 04 06 14 00 66 8b 1c 72 6c 42 86 4e 8e 99 34 57 c4 6a b0 b9 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0011 Boot Menu FvFile(86488440-41bb-42c7-93ac-450fbf7766bf)
dp: 04 06 14 00 40 84 48 86 bb 41 c7 42 93 ac 45 0f bf 77 66 bf / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0012 UEFI Diagnostics FvFile(f8397897-e203-4a62-b977-9e7e5d94d91b)
dp: 04 06 14 00 97 78 39 f8 03 e2 62 4a b9 77 9e 7e 5d 94 d9 1b / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0013* NVMe: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,001c199932d94c4eae9aa0b6e98eb8a4)
dp: 03 0a 24 00 d2 38 78 bc 82 0f 60 4d 83 16 c0 68 ee 79 d2 5b 00 1c 19 99 32 d9 4c 4e ae 9a a0 b6 e9 8e b8 a4 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0014* USB FDD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,6ff015a28830b543a8b8641009461e49)
dp: 03 0a 24 00 d2 38 78 bc 82 0f 60 4d 83 16 c0 68 ee 79 d2 5b 6f f0 15 a2 88 30 b5 43 a8 b8 64 10 09 46 1e 49 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0015* USB HDD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,33e821aaaf33bc4789bd419f88c50803)
dp: 03 0a 24 00 d2 38 78 bc 82 0f 60 4d 83 16 c0 68 ee 79 d2 5b 33 e8 21 aa af 33 bc 47 89 bd 41 9f 88 c5 08 03 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0016* USB CD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,86701296aa5a7848b66cd49dd3ba6a55)
dp: 03 0a 24 00 d2 38 78 bc 82 0f 60 4d 83 16 c0 68 ee 79 d2 5b 86 70 12 96 aa 5a 78 48 b6 6c d4 9d d3 ba 6a 55 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0017* USB LAN: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,e854bca4cae7704ca322b00da0376322)
dp: 03 0a 24 00 d2 38 78 bc 82 0f 60 4d 83 16 c0 68 ee 79 d2 5b e8 54 bc a4 ca e7 70 4c a3 22 b0 0d a0 37 63 22 / 7f ff 04 00



So that happened. I then checked to see if it could boot on its own, and it did so, once.
I can still get it to boot using the 'shift' and 'Fn + F2' keys like I'd previously mentioned, but other than that, no operational change.

Thank you,
Don

[oldfred]

The efibootmgr list is just to see what entries you have.
You still show 0000 as Windows entry.

[dondidge]

Greetings,

I apparently misunderstood the purpose of this quoted part. I thought it would create the '0000' entry new, and I thought it did so.

To add a Windows entry to boot Ubuntu.
The efibootmgr assumes default of sda1 for ESP, so you have to specify if any other location for ESP.
Create new Windows entry that boots shim.
sudo efibootmgr -c -L "Windows Boot Manager" -l "\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi" -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 1

Those parameters looked good to me so I ran them that way.
I'm sorry I thought that's what you were asking me to do.
I entered those lines and ran them, which gave me a different printout than I'd had before.

Here is the previous printout:

didge@didge-Lenovo-Flex-7-14IRU8:~$ sudo efibootmgr
[sudo] password for didge:

BootCurrent: 0001

Timeout: 0 seconds

BootOrder: 0001,0013,0014,0015,0016,0017

Boot0001* Ubuntu HD(1,GPT,4a550efe-8ca1-4e80-a22c-4cd585abc4a4,0x800,0x219800)/

File(\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi)

Boot0010 Setup FvFile(721c8b66-426c-4e86-8e99-3457c46ab0b9)

Boot0011 Boot Menu FvFile(86488440-41bb-42c7-93ac-450fbf7766bf)

Boot0012 UEFI Diagnostics FvFile(f8397897-e203-4a62-b977-9e7e5d94d91b)

Boot0013* NVMe: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,001c199932d94c4eae9aa0b6e98eb8a4)

Boot0014* USB FDD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,6ff015a28830b543a8b8641009461e49)

Boot0015* USB HDD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,33e821aaaf33bc4789bd419f88c50803)

Boot0016* USB CD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,86701296aa5a7848b66cd49dd3ba6a55)

Boot0017* USB LAN: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,e854bca4cae7704ca322b00da0376322)



I apologize if I got confused and did the wrong thing here.

Here is the new printout:
didge@didge-Lenovo-Flex-7-14IRU8:~$ efibootmgr
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0001,0013,0014,0015,0016,0017
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,4a550efe-8ca1-4e80-a22c-4cd585abc4a4,0x800,0x219800)/File(\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi)
Boot0001* Ubuntu HD(1,GPT,4a550efe-8ca1-4e80-a22c-4cd585abc4a4,0x800,0x219800)/File(\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi)
Boot0010 Setup FvFile(721c8b66-426c-4e86-8e99-3457c46ab0b9)
Boot0011 Boot Menu FvFile(86488440-41bb-42c7-93ac-450fbf7766bf)
Boot0012 UEFI Diagnostics FvFile(f8397897-e203-4a62-b977-9e7e5d94d91b)
Boot0013* NVMe: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,001c199932d94c4eae9aa0b6e98eb8a4)
Boot0014* USB FDD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,6ff015a28830b543a8b8641009461e49)
Boot0015* USB HDD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,33e821aaaf33bc4789bd419f88c50803)
Boot0016* USB CD: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,86701296aa5a7848b66cd49dd3ba6a55)
Boot0017* USB LAN: VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,e854bca4cae7704ca322b00da0376322)

Thanks again.
Don

[oldfred]

Even though descriptions are different, both the ubuntu & Windows boot entries are using the same shimx64.efi.

Do you get any difference in booting between the two?
If so, it is something in UEFI, that you may not be able to change or a UEFI setting that can be changed.