Arch Linux

notCarl

Member

Registered: 2016-12-28

Posts: 7

Newest Kernel 5.0 breaking system

Hey everyone.
I've been using Arch for about two years now, and this is the first time an update has totally broken my system, so I'm looking for some advice on where to start poking around through logs to find what caused this issue.

Last night I ran pacman -Syu and on reboot my system would get a black screen right after the grub menu, I'd see init ramfs flash for a second (something like that) and then the system will run but with a black screen. I could not change tty and I could not blindly enter username password and shutdown the system, so I think it was not responsive at all.

nomodeset didn't do anything in the kernel parameters at GRUB menu and I am only using Intel integrated graphics drivers.

My computer is a Dell XPS 9570, but I've always kept the discrete graphics disabled.

I rolled back to the last kernel and everything works fine, but I'd like to figure out why this newest kernel is breaking my machine.

Thanks for reading!!

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 19,103

Re: Newest Kernel 5.0 breaking system

Was there anything in the journal from the failed boot?

frebib

Member

Registered: 2018-04-07

Posts: 4

Re: Newest Kernel 5.0 breaking system

I too have an XPS 9570 (for work) and am experiencing the same symptoms of blank screen after the bootloader. I wasted an hour at work trying to debug this before reverting the other day so until a fix is found/it starts working again I'll just stick with 4.20.x.

I read a few forum posts with suggestions to try module_blacklist=video or acpi_backlight=vendor but no combination of adding those or anything else made any difference

For reference:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=244190&p=2
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=244776

Last edited by frebib (2019-03-10 21:00:40)

notCarl

Member

Registered: 2016-12-28

Posts: 7

Re: Newest Kernel 5.0 breaking system

loqs, which journal could I find this information? I realize that's a noob question, but I've luckly made it this far without needing to troubleshoot an issue like this before. If you could tell me where to find the journal you're talking about I'd appreciate it.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 19,103

Re: Newest Kernel 5.0 breaking system

Systemd/Journal

ayng

Member

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 5

Re: Newest Kernel 5.0 breaking system

Hi, I ran into similar issues with 5.0. Specifically, my keyboard and monitor were unresponsive and malfunctioning respectively, despite working fine on 4.20.4, so I was effectively locked out of my machine. More details in my forum post: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=244814

While I never figured out what was causing the issues, upgrading to 5.0.1 fixed everything for me. At the time of writing, you can get it in the testing repo. Hope that helps, let us know how it goes!

I spoke too soon. In my case, 5.0 wasn't actually the problem; my system was just not set up correctly to handle the upgrade.

Last edited by ayng (2019-03-11 02:13:53)

jacobhernandez

Member

Registered: 2019-03-11

Posts: 1

Website

Re: Newest Kernel 5.0 breaking system

I suggest using linux-lts instead of latest mainline kernel as it will likely break your system. Use the latest stable kernel if you have any unsupported hardware that works with the new kernel.