Hang when trying to boot Ubuntu 18.04 on Mac
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Hi,
I'm using rEFInd 0.11.4, which I've installed on a Mac Pro (mid 2012) using MacOS. I then installed Ubuntu 18.04.3. When rEFInd loads, I can see the Ubuntu installation and select it, but it hangs on the screen which says:
rEFInd - Booting OS
Starting vmlinuz-5.0.0-34-generic
Using load options 'ro root=UUID=<uuid> initrd=boot\initrd.img-5.0.0-23-generic'</uuid>
Any ideas on what I can do to fix this? I can see the ext4 driver has been installed.
Thanks,
Scott
This seems like it may be a kernel problem on this system. I was able to sort of work around the problem by doing the following:
1) Install Ubuntu 16.04.1 from USB (which does boot)
2) Install refind from Rod's PPA
3) Upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04
However, the system can't seem to boot from the 18.04 kernel. I had to go back to the 16.04 one. So it seems this system may unfortunately be broken in later kernels.
You could try one or more of the ubuntu mainline kernels found here:
https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/
If I were you, I would try the 5.2.11 kernel:
https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.2.11/
If you're lucky, there's a regression in the 5.0 series that's fixed in the 5.2 series. In that case, try installing ubuntu 19.10 in a few weeks time.
If you're not lucky, you could try a kernel closer to what came with the first releases of 18.04, namely the 4.15 series:
https://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.15.18/
If that works, it means you could do a clean install of 18.04.1 (note the .1) and stick with an older kernel that will still get security updates until 2023. The difference in installing the older point release is that it doesn't have the Hardware Enablement Stack meant to provide long term support to hardware that's newer than April 2018.
Yeah, I can try to narrow down when this hardware broke. The 18.04 upgrade comes with 4.15.x (ie, I can't boot 4.15.x) so it broke somewhere between 4.4 and 4.15.
Well, if the computer works with 4.4, then the hardware didn't break. And, if you've got the time and the means to track down the root cause, you can get it fixed. I recently discovered two regressions in the kernel that affected a 32 bit laptop built in 2005 and worked with kernel developers to get them fixed.
I didn't mean that the hardware broke...I meant that that kernel's support for said hardware broke. :-)
Looks like it broke between 4.7 and 4.8rc1. Started the git bisection.
To close the loop, it looks like 475fb4e8b2f4444d1d7b406ff3a7d21bc89a1e6f broke it. Going to stop the discussion here as this clearly isn't a rEFInd problem.