Arch Linux

B-80

Member

Registered: 2010-05-05

Posts: 47

Computer reboots when booting into any linux, Windows OK

I've run across a very wierd issue that I don't understand at all. I have an old lubuntu installation on my machine that I tried to boot into today, I get no error messages or anything from GRUB when I choose to boot into ubuntu, but I get a blank screen with a cursor for about a second then my machine reboots. Assuming there was an issue with the system files, I decided to just overwrite that disk with arch. The arch loader boots up just fine, but when I try to "run arch linux 64 bit" I get the following lines of text and then again my machine reboots:

Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok
early console in decompress_kernel

Decompressing Linux... Parsing ELF... done.
Booting the kernel.
:: running early hook [udev]
starting version 226
:: running hook [udev]
:: Triggering uevents...

I tried looking at my var/log/dmesg on my lubuntu install through Windows, but no file has been updated since July 22 2015, which is the last time I booted into lubuntu. I tried running a memtest to see if it's a bad stick of ram, but my machine passed. Basically I have no idea what's going on here and don't really know how I can even begin to troubleshoot this. Has anyone ever had a problem like this or have any ideas on what they would try to get some traction as to what's going on?

Thanks in advance

hannson

Member

From: .de

Registered: 2014-01-28

Posts: 37

Website

Re: Computer reboots when booting into any linux, Windows OK

Can you access the /var/log/dmesg logs with a live usb stick? I'm a bit confused why you would look at your lubuntu install when you overwrote it with arch?
Btw what graphic card are you using and which driver? What does the Xorg log say and did you specify any xorg confs?

B-80

Member

Registered: 2010-05-05

Posts: 47

Re: Computer reboots when booting into any linux, Windows OK

Can you access the /var/log/dmesg logs with a live usb stick? I'm a bit confused why you would look at your lubuntu install when you overwrote it with arch?
Btw what graphic card are you using and which driver? What does the Xorg log say and did you specify any xorg confs?

So I actually didn't get a chance to overwrite with Arch because when I try to launch the Arch LiveCD my machine reboots immediately. It seems like nothing is getting written to my disks during boot unfortunately, so looking at /var/log/dmesg gives me logging info from several months ago.

I actually did have the machine boot into Lubuntu one time when I added "Debug" to the kernel options in grub, but after about a minute the machine randomly hard rebooted again. It's like the machine just hates linux now...

I didn't think it was a graphics issue because even Arch, which doesn't come with X installed, had a hard reboot when it was loading into ram. Not to mention I can still play games on Windows with my card (which is a GTX 460). I will say that I have had some issues with the graphics driver on Windows that I suppose are a possible indication the card is dying. But could there really be an issue that causes hard reboots for Linux on boot while still allowing me to play modern games on Windows? I just assumed if the card was in bad shape I'd at least see artifacts in games.

I don't think anything has been written to the Xorg logs, but I'll check again later today. As I said, no file on the disk has a modified time after July of this year. My best guess as of now is that this is either a hardware thing or some weird BIOS/UEFI settings that Windows updates have changed...

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,535

Website

Re: Computer reboots when booting into any linux, Windows OK

I didn't think it was a graphics issue because even Arch, which doesn't come with X installed...

That's not necessarily a safe assumption.  I don't know all the inner workings of the live iso environment, but generally kernel mode setting kicks in long before X starts (and independent of whether X is installed).  The stage of booting that you have output from is about when one would expect KMS to kick in.

To test this you could boot with the kernel option 'nomodeset'.

It could also be a graphics issue even if your graphics card works great with windows.  It *might* be that your card needs some special finessing to work with linux.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman