Arch Linux

Soroshi

Member

Registered: 2016-01-27

Posts: 8

[Solved] Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 260 cannot boot past grub

Edit: If you have this laptop and have the same issue, add kernel parameter intel_pstate=no_hwp and it will boot up right away. Discussion on why this is needed  and the consequences can be found on my fourth post.

Hello, I am a bit of a newbie here, but I have tried everything I can find and nothing seems to get my new thinkpad to boot with an arch live usb drive (so that I can actually install arch!)
After the systemd-boot menu I just get a blank screen, but the backlight is on so I know the screen is ON.

My laptop is the new Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 260, which has an i5-6200U CPU and Intel HD 520 GPU (Skylake)
I am using UEFI because I want to dual boot with windows 10
Secure Boot is disabled

Things I have tried:

• added kernel parameters nomodeset and/or i915.modeset=0 before attempting boot

• attempted boot with both the current arch install image (kernel 4.3.3) and one that I created with archiso with the [Testing] repo enabled (for kernel 4.4.1)

• added MODULES="intel_agp i915" to mkinitcpio.conf and re-built the 4.4.1 iso, as well as the other fixes suggested here

• added kernel parameter i915.preliminary_hw_support=1 even though both kernel versions tried should have full skylake support

• I also tried to boot with bios set to legacy mode and it got to "Booting the kernel." and sat like that for a full 15 minutes until I gave up and killed the power. This was with the 4.3.3 iso
  The output on the screen (that was still visible) is as follows:

  Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok
  early console in decompress_kernel
  input_data: 0x0000000001a1a3b4
  input_len: 0x0000000000412c31
  output: 0x0000000001000000
  output_len: 0x0000000000e1b9a8
  run_size: 0x0000000000f65000
  
  Decompressing Linux... Parsing ELF... done.
  Booting the kernel.

  Booting the 4.4.1 iso that I made in legacy mode yields the same except it doesn't get past the first line, after the "ok"

Other notes:
Unlike this guy I cannot blindly type commands like reboot or shutdown after waiting a reasonable amount of time for the system to boot to the shell (nothing happens) which seems to imply that it's not just a video problem, but it's actually not booting.
I would have tried to ssh in too, but this laptop only has wireless.

It might be possible that in UEFI mode it also gets to "Booting the kernel." before getting stuck, but additionally does not display anything to the screen making it impossible for me to tell.

In every case, if I leave it long enough my fan starts running loudly and the computer gets mildly warm - so it's trying to do something?

This thread (and the associated wiki) were not very helpful (I was hoping that similar hardware would have led to similar solutions)

The latest Linux Mint live USB booted without issue, but I would really rather use arch.

Last edited by Soroshi (2016-02-07 08:27:45)

Soroshi

Member

Registered: 2016-01-27

Posts: 8

Re: [Solved] Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 260 cannot boot past grub

Since my first post I have tried a number of other things to no avail.

• Rather than continue to mess around with iso install images, I used another computer to install arch on an external hard drive, and after booting (on the other computer) I compiled and installed linux-mainline based on the solution found here. That provided no out of the box fixes however.

• I added first intel_agp and i915, and then just i915 to the linux mainline initramfs image.

• I tried booting with and without all permutations of nomodeset and i915.modeset=0 kernel parameters

• I tried the tpm_tis.interrupts=0 kernel parameter because I read that this being enabled used to cause boot to take over 5 minutes, though I am sure that bug has been fixed by now, that was a while ago.

• I tried i915.preliminary_hw_support=1 yet again, but nothing.

• I tried disabling various "security" features such as "memory execution protection" and the TPM chip in my BIOS/UEFI settings, to no avail.

At this point I am at a loss on what to try next. Grub loads up just fine, so it would seem it's not an issue with my UEFI version. When I make a selection in grub the last message I see is "loading initramfs" or whatever the exact wording is. The entire installation booted fine on a different computer, so it's not the install. Other people with the same GPU and/or CPU have gotten linux to boot on their system, which at least would seem to rule out a "skylake problem". Linux Mint still boots just fine except it does not recognize my wifi card, so that would seem to indicate that nothing in the BIOS is blocking something from booting from USB or booting at all.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, no matter how far fetched!

Last edited by Soroshi (2016-02-04 13:35:34)

Soroshi

Member

Registered: 2016-01-27

Posts: 8

Re: [Solved] Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 260 cannot boot past grub

Ok, so I got it to boot finally, but the problems are not over...

The "magic" kernel parameter was nolapic which I tried after reading this post. I understand the parameter affects processor interrupt hardware, and that I don't want to run with it disabled long-term. What I would need to do to allow me to boot without this flag, I really don't know.

Because I was able to boot though, I now can post the kernel output from dmesg! I have looked through it but I don't really know what most of it means... (I am very new to linux)
dmesg output

as always, any suggestions would be appreciated. Otherwise I will continue to compile my experiences here for anyone else who might have similar problems with this laptop.

Soroshi

Member

Registered: 2016-01-27

Posts: 8

Re: [Solved] Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 260 cannot boot past grub

I believe I have found a solution (though not a completely satisfactory one). I will mark this topic as solved.
Adding intel_pstate=no_hwp allows complete booting, without nolapic which is good because based on my understanding of this that will limit you to one one processor core.

I tried intel_pstate=no_hwp after coming across this post and it turns out it even allows boot on kernel 4.3.3-3 (I was able to boot the current install iso). The reason Linux Mint booted is because it was on kernel 3.19 which does not have the intel_pstate hwp support for skylake so there was nothing that needed to be disabled.
Unfortunately, as discussed on the linked reddit post, this is a driver and/or hardware/BIOS problem (see bug report linked in the reddit post) that we can simply hope is fixed somewhere down the line. It is obviously not fixed in 4.5rc2 as I was using that earlier, but perhaps in later builds. In the mean time, we have to settle with less than optimal battery life which is not the end of the world.

kumala

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 22

Re: [Solved] Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 260 cannot boot past grub

Thanks so much for all the research and the detailed posts, that really helps!

I just received a very similar laptop, the Lenovo X1 Carbon 4th gen from 2016, and it has the exact same issue. I was starting to despair but adding intel_pstate=no_hwp as you suggest allows to boot.

Now I'm going to try the actual install!

R@lph

Member

From: Hilden

Registered: 2015-12-07

Posts: 1

Website

Re: [Solved] Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 260 cannot boot past grub

Thanks so much!

Same here, I just got a Lenovo X1 Carbon 4th gen from 2016, and it has the exact same issue. I was starting to despair also but adding intel_pstate=no_hwp as you suggest allows to boot.

Great!