Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop

JaredBusch

My desktop has all the same updates applied, but has not been rebooted yet as I was out of town.

I'm home now, and will be able to mess with this. First up, I don't know where to go to look for a log since the thing is not getting to any visible boot state.

The drive appears normal. I put it in a USB housing and copied a few things off, like my SSH identity files.

Otherwise, I'm not worried about losing the information, nothing on my laptop is important, unless saved in my Nextcloud sync folder. But I would prefer to figure out what went wrong.

Obviously not risking a reboot of my desktop right now either. Because while there is no critical data on my desktop not saved elsewhere, the time to resetup my environment and Windows VMs for dev is very unappealing.

JaredBusch

I did have a Fedora 31 laptop (different model Dell than mine) spun up and logged in two weeks ago. I have ran updates on that one and rebooted. it is running fine.

But it has almost nothing installed. I was only testing some Nextcloud stuff on it.

Obsolesce

After it fails, doesn't journalctl give any indication of what's causing failures to boot?

JaredBusch

@Obsolesce said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

After it fails, doesn't journalctl give any indication of what's causing failures to boot?

it is in a boot loop. there is nothing to see.

if I choose to boot to recovery mode, it drops straight to emergency mode.

journalctl -xb retuns like 1200+ lines. going through that line by line was not something I felt like doing late in the day on Friday after Thanksgiving, while visiting friends.

at a glance it also looked like only the recovery mode boot was in that log.

JaredBusch

waiting on something to copy off the drive that I cannot find the second copy of. then i'll have it back in my laptop and ready to fuck with.

JaredBusch

The contents of /etc/grub.d seem identical on all three systems I have here.

My Desktop - have not tried to reboot
My Laptop - does not boot
Spare Laptop - reboots successfully.

flaxking

@stacksofplates said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

I'll have to check my laptop to compare kernels. Mine won't go to sleep. If I shut the lid and open it again it does a hard reboot instead of resuming from sleep.

Mine goes to sleep when I unplug it from power

black3dynamite

Here's an example of my Grub setting using UEFI on Fedora

sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv
# GRUB Environment Block
saved_entry=a0a0a0b0a0000000a0a000000a00aaaa-5.3.12-300.fc31.x86_64
menu_auto_hide=1
boot_success=1
kernelopts=root=/dev/mapper/fedora_user-root ro rd.lvm.lv=fedora_user/root rd.luks.uuid=luks-0aa0aa00-341a-0000-000a-a000a0a0aa70 rhgb quiet
boot_indeterminate=0

JaredBusch

@black3dynamite said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

Here's an example of my Grub setting using UEFI on Fedora
sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv

There we go.. grubenv is missing on my laptop.

black3dynamite

@JaredBusch said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

@black3dynamite said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:
Here's an example of my Grub setting using UEFI on Fedora
sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv
There we go.. grubenv is missing on my laptop.

That can also be missing if you are not using UEFI. In fact, there shouldn't be nothing in /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/ if you using BIOS instead of UEFI.

sudo find /boot/ -name grub.cfg will output one of the following:

BIOS
/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

UEFI
/boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

JaredBusch

@black3dynamite said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

@JaredBusch said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:
@black3dynamite said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:
Here's an example of my Grub setting using UEFI on Fedora
sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv
There we go.. grubenv is missing on my laptop.
That can also be missing if you are not using UEFI. In fact, there shouldn't be nothing in /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/ if you using BIOS instead of UEFI.

sudo find /boot/ -name grub.cfg will output one of the following:

BIOS
/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

UEFI
/boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

It is (was) UEFI for certain. BIOS config is set to UEFI boot.

Obsolesce

@JaredBusch said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

@black3dynamite said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:
Here's an example of my Grub setting using UEFI on Fedora
sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv
There we go.. grubenv is missing on my laptop.

Remove grubenv, that's a nice update feature...

black3dynamite

@Obsolesce said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

@JaredBusch said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:
@black3dynamite said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:
Here's an example of my Grub setting using UEFI on Fedora
sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv
There we go.. grubenv is missing on my laptop.
Remove grubenv, that's a nice update feature...

On UEFI system, /boot/grub2/grubenv is a symbolic link to /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv. Maybe an update to grub screwed up something.

black3dynamite

I don't even if know if this will fix grub or not. But here you go.

Create a new empty grubenv file in /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv.

sudo grub2-editenv /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv create

I noticed on my system, there is a symbolic of /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv in /boot/grub2/

sudo ln -sf /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv /boot/grub2/grubenv

Rebuild GRUB

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

Rebuild initramfs images

sudo dracut --force --regenerate-all

And then reboot.

JaredBusch

@Obsolesce said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

@JaredBusch said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:
@black3dynamite said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:
Here's an example of my Grub setting using UEFI on Fedora
sudo cat /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv
There we go.. grubenv is missing on my laptop.
Remove grubenv, that's a nice update feature...

The updates show that grub had changes. Shit happens with all OS.

grub2-common                    noarch 1:2.02-103.fc31           updates 876 k
grub2-efi-x64                   x86_64 1:2.02-103.fc31           updates 458 k
grub2-pc-modules                noarch 1:2.02-103.fc31           updates 847 k
grub2-tools                     x86_64 1:2.02-103.fc31           updates 1.8 M
grub2-tools-efi                 x86_64 1:2.02-103.fc31           updates 469 k
grub2-tools-extra               x86_64 1:2.02-103.fc31           updates 916 k
grub2-tools-minimal             x86_64 1:2.02-103.fc31           updates 552 k

JaredBusch

@black3dynamite said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

I don't even if know if this will fix grub or not. But here you go.

Create a new empty grubenv file in /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv.
sudo grub2-editenv /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv create
I noticed on my system, there is a symbolic of /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv in /boot/grub2/
sudo ln -sf /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubenv /boot/grub2/grubenv
Rebuild GRUB
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg
Rebuild initramfs images
sudo dracut --force --regenerate-all
And then reboot.

Actually, the /boot/efi/ folder was completely empty. No sub-folders or anything.
I made EFI/fedora in there and then the commands ran.

But no change in behavior

Obsolesce

@JaredBusch got a backup that happened to grab /boot...?

Or maybe copy what's needed from a working system?

JaredBusch

@Obsolesce said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

@JaredBusch got a backup that happened to grab /boot...?

Or maybe copy what's needed from a working system?

No backup since the data is sync'd.

Mostly I'm trying to figure out how to resolve without a reinstall if possible for knowledge sake. Not to save my system.

jmoore

So it was an update that did this?

JaredBusch

@jmoore said in Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop:

So it was an update that did this?

Had to be, as it was working. I shutdown to go home. Then it wasn't working.

Solved Fedora 31 stuck in a boot loop