Weird behavior when updating distro

Help
1

helo, in recent weeks i had a weird situation, when i do some updates, related to kernel, libraries, drivers, if i dont select any of the options when the pc turns on, the boot menu with the 5 options, pc might stay on a black screen, and i am forced to turn it off by hand

if i select a option form the menu, no problem, it updates and starts like nothing happened, but if i dont select anything, it just stays in a black screen, it is a behavior that only happened in recent weeks, but yesterday i had it and felt like reporting it

my specs

Operating System: KDE neon User Edition
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.22.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Kernel Version: 6.17.0-14-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 4 × AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Radeon Vega Graphics
Memory: 8 GiB of RAM (6,7 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics
Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: A520I AC

2

It sounds like a problem with grub configuration. You might look at the file /etc/default/grub first, particularly the lines starting with GRUB_DEFAULT=
and GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=. What you describe seems like there’s no selection for GRUB_DEFAULT=, which is by default 0 in order to boot the very first entry if none is selected manually before timeout.

1 Like
3

thank you for your reply

when checking the grub, i found this

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=‘KDE neon User Edition’
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=‘quiet splash’
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=“”

i dont see a savedefault line

4

Oh, sorry, I forgot; GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT= is one of the things I’ve added as part of some customization, which you can ignore.
If GRUB_DEFAULT=0 is there, the problem should be somewhere else, although the behavior is as if it is blank.
Unfortunately, the rest is beyond me, but maybe AI support can help more with troubleshooting this weird behavior if it persists even after sudo update-grub.

5

Haha - I remember arguing with people in the past about using something called ‘grub customiser’.

Your BEST solution might be to replace your file with a default, and then (if you have a good reason) edit that to suit your case.

I tidied mine up, and added some options:

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="acpi_osi=!! udev.log_priority=3 amd_pstate=passive snd_hda_intel.power_save=0 systemd.battery_check=false highres=on acpi_irq_balance nokaslr random.trust_cpu=on cpuidle.governor=teo rcupdate.rcu_expedited=1 rd.systemd.show_status=true mitigations=off clocksource=tsc transparent_hugepage=never numa_balancing=disable numa=off pcie_aspm=off nowatchdog nmi_watchdog=0 audit=0 "

Don’t copy and paste anything you don’t understand, and heed my strong warning to avoid the use use of any external grub customiser.

Your settings set the timeout to zero and it’s hidden - so try first setting a 20 second timeout, and don’t hide it.

Add the line ‘GRUB_DEFAULT=saved’ and if it still doesn’t work, try hashing out your CMD line:

# GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT `blah blah blah`

generally running ‘update-grub’ or ‘install-grub’ should fix any issues aside from your personal choices.

Here’s an idea for a basic ‘default’:

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

To use this, you should start with a quick backup:

sudo cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.backup

Then you can edit and paste the simpler Grub:

kate /etc/default/grub

CtrlA selects all, press DelCtrlV to paste the text.

CtrlS will save it… F4 opens a terminal pane where you can type sudo update-grub

rebootenter

6

well, i never edited grub, so i do not know what should be there or not, if i understand correctly, your suggestion is wipe the grub file and then put inside it just this text?

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

because that sounds to me a bit excessive, most of what is on the file is commented anyways

this is the content, i never changed a thing in there

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR='KDE neon User Edition'
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT='quiet splash'
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# If your computer has multiple operating systems installed, then you
# probably want to run os-prober. However, if your computer is a host
# for guest OSes installed via LVM or raw disk devices, running
# os-prober can cause damage to those guest OSes as it mounts
# filesystems to look for things.
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"
7

Ok, I took out the ‘quiet splash’ because that’s not useful (it’s ‘polish’), but yes - Grub will have a timeout which you should see, because that wouldn’t be hidden either…

It’s very simple to test it out, and then you could use meld to copy back lines from your copy - or copy lines from here TO your copy, and restore that later.