Problem with latest Kernel

Support & Help Requests
#1

This is pretty weird. I’m running Ubuntu-MATE 15.04 on a Dell Studio 1745 laptop and last night there was an kernel upgrade from 3.19.0-30 to 3.19.0-31. After installing it I rebooted and at first everything was fine… for about 30 seconds, then the mouse pointer just stopped working completely. Couldn’t move the pointer & no left/right clicks either. It’s a Logitech M570 wireless trackball, by the way. Tried the built in touch-pad, same thing.

So I had to hold the power button for 4 seconds & tried again, thinking that it might have been a glitch. Boots up fine & this time I got as far as opening the menu & was going to click on a program & yep, same thing happened. Tried unplugging the wireless dongle & rebooted to see if maybe the latest kernel had problems with it. Still did it after loading desktop.

There’s no problem when I go back to 3.19.0-30 kernel, so I deleted the 3.19.0-31 kernel via synaptic & locked the 3.19.0-30 kernel files. My problem is, I can’t tell if this IS a Track-Ball/touch-pad issue, or perhaps just the system crashing. Checked /var/crash folder, no crash reports shown and none of the other log files in /var/log show anything unusual.

Is anyone else having problems with this new kernel? Will I still be able to get updates, just not new kernel ones? Will this affect the upcoming 15.10 upgrade? And final question, I promise, will I be able to see if there is a 3.19.0-32 kernel upgrade in Synaptic while the 3.19.0-30 is locked?

Tune in tomorrow for another episode of “When The Kernel Popped”! :wink:

Thanks for reading! :wink:

#2

Is anyone else having problems with this new kernel?

I’m not at my computer to check at the moment, but I did upgrade to a new kernel yesterday (but didn’t reboot to actually use it). I’ll find out later today. :wink:

Will I still be able to get updates, just not new kernel ones?

Yep. When Software Updater appears, you can choose selectively which updates you want. Synaptic will have locked that version, so I wouldn’t think it would appear in Software Updater.

Kernel modules like NVIDIA’s drivers and VirtualBox are compiled against the current kernel. If either one are updated, then they’d be recompiled. You’d be fine updating these.

Will this affect the upcoming 15.10 upgrade?

Possibly, as 15.10 will feature the 4.x kernel and the upgrade process disables other repositories before it does. Whether it “clears” version locks, I’m not sure.

And final question, I promise, will I be able to see if there is a 3.19.0-32 kernel upgrade in Synaptic while the 3.19.0-30 is locked?

Yep. There’s a column that shows the current version installed and the latest version available. You may need to reload or apt-get update to see the latest lists.

As far as actually diagnosing the issue, you could take a look at the change log (via Synaptic or Software Updater) to see what subtle change has caused your system to misbehave.

#3

Same here! After upgrading the kernel my laptop freezes most of the times and the only way is to force a shut-down, as @SantaFe mentioned above, by using the power button.
I am running ubuntu mate 15.04 on my Lenovo ideapad s300.

#4

Turns out I’m running 3.19.0-30-generic on Ubuntu MATE 15.04 and do not have any further updates. Hmm… odd. Maybe it’s been pulled out because of this?

#5

@lah7 I also checked for updates and there is no new kernel version any more. Obviously, I got rid the ill kernel. Maybe, it was something wrong with that version and the developers pulled it out.

#6

[quote=“lah7, post:2, topic:2378”]
Will this affect the upcoming 15.10 upgrade?

Possibly, as 15.10 will feature the 4.x kernel and the upgrade process disables other repositories before it does. Whether it “clears” version locks, I’m not sure.
[/quote]Interesting. I’ll just have to remember to unlock them if a new kernel is out or Ubuntu-MATE 15.10 is available, whichever comes first! :wink:

#7

Was over in the Ubuntu forums, and I guess someone there posted something along the same lines. The poster here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2297923&p=13369302#post13369302 said it might have something to do with having Pre Released Updates checked in Synaptic.

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So I unchecked it & am going to unlock the kernels & see if it was just a proposed kernal that wasn't working right or not. :wink:

Of course I've just had a thought, if all the kernels I've been getting were in the vivid-proposed part of the repositories, what will the next one be? Just hope hilarity doesn't ensue next update. :smiley:

#8

A slightly different problem with kernel, but i think it can fit here.
I had a problem with the kernel yesterday i tried to update nvidia proprietary drivers to the last version 352.xx and my PC went black because the display drivers were for a newer version of kernel. I’m not very good at this type of things but i managed to turn back to proprietary drivers to 346.xx those works fine.

#9

@SantaFe That sounds like the culprit alright! Proposed updates are untested as this Wiki article describes:

Enabling the proposed updates repository can break your system. It is not recommended for inexperienced users.

The proposed updates are updates which are waiting to be moved into the recommended updates queue after some testing. They may never reach recommended or they may be replaced with a more recent update.
Enabling this is reasonable if you want to participate in testing minor updates, or know that your specific problem has been solved here but the package hasn’t reached recommended yet.

I wonder if there’s a misleading guide that encourages checking this?

@skeleton Are you using 15.04 too? Pretty sure releases will have kernel updates up to a certain point (especially LTS, I don’t think they’ll push new ones out that often)

Just as a quick tip for any less experienced users visiting here with unbootable systems: Hold SHIFT down during boot to show the GRUB menu, you’ll be able to choose the previously working kernel from there. :smile:

#10

@lah7 Im an an LTS user, i run the non LTS releases only virtualy

#11

Learned a hard lesson awhile back about enabling proposed updates as it broke my system so I don’t enable it.Have a computer running 15.04 that hadn’t been started in a couple weeks so started it ran updates got new nvidia driver and virtualbox restarted and it came up with no problem all updates installed. I always run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and it seems to pull all the right drivers kernels etc. if needed.You might try going into Synaptic searching for the last kernel and nvidia driver and removing them then reinstalling the driver built with earlier kernel that will boot.

#12

Well after all that fuss, got a new Kernel update. And it’s 3.19.0-31! :wink: This one I got without pre-released updates checked, and it’s working fine. :wink:

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