Re: Problem with Ubuntu 22.04 failing to restart from NVME SSD, needs a power cycle

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 09:58:42PM -0500, Glenn Washburn wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Aug 2022 13:44:27 +0100
> Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 01:39:09AM -0500, Glenn Washburn wrote:
> > > Hi Chris,
> > > 
> > > On Mon, 1 Aug 2022 14:41:14 +0100
> > > Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > A year or two ago I got a lot of help from this list when I installed
> > > > an NVME SSD on my system and, because it wasn't recognised by the BIOS
> > > > I had to configure a slightly odd boot sequence to get it to work.
> > > > 
> > > > It has been working beautifully through two or three versions of
> > > > [x]ubuntu until I recently upgraded from 21.10 to 22.04.
> > > > 
> > > > The system runs OK but it can't be restarted, I have to power down and
> > > > power up again, then it boots OK.
> > > > 
> > > > If I wait for a while after a restart I see:-
> > > > 
> > > >     Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device
> > > >     Common problems:
> > > >        -Boot arge (cat /proc/cmdline)
> > > >           - check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
> > > >           - missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
> > > > 
> > > >     ALERT: UUID=2d6ff70c-1894-4afa-a35c-5abb40549d3b does not exist.
> > > >     Dropping to a shell!
> > > 
> > > This is output most likely from your initrd, and almost certainly not
> > > from GRUB. I'm wondering what kind of reboot you're doing. Are you sure
> > > if a soft boot? Do you see any output from GRUB? It occurs to me that
> > > you might be doing a kexec reboot, in which case GRUB is not even in
> > > the picture. Regardless, you're either skipping GRUB or GRUB is working
> > > enough to hand off to the Linux kernel. So this doesn't seem to be a
> > > GRUB issue.
> > > 
> > Thanks for coming back to me, even though this looks like it isn't a
> > GRUB issue.
> > 
> > Yes, I do see GRUB talking to me before the above message, I get the
> > usual list of things that I can boot with older kernels, memtest, etc.
> > 
> > So it looks as if, for some reason, on restart/reboot initrd can't see
> > the NVME drive. I.e. the kernel hasn't reset/restarted something
> > necessary.
> 
> The fact that you see GRUB says to me that the firmware sees the drive
> fine, assuming that GRUB is on the NVME drive.
> 
No, GRUB isn't on the NVME drive.  That's why this is an unusual
problem. 

The relevant bits of /etc/fstab are:-
    #
    #
    # / (/dev/nvme0n1p2) root filesystem, just contains OS
    #
    UUID=2d6ff70c-1894-4afa-a35c-5abb40549d3b       /       ext4  
errors=remount-ro 0       1
    #
    #
    # /boot (/dev/sda1 SATA SSD)
    #
    UUID=9369df95-29a8-4cbd-adf0-80dfd765f1ba       /boot   ext4    defaults    
    0       2
    #
    #
    # swap (/dbev/nvme0n1p1)
    #
    UUID=88e3aeed-1d01-4523-a209-b3b4cc027dc7       none    swap    sw          
    0       0
    #
    #
    # /home (/dev/nvme0n1p3)
    #
    UUID=7e8a314e-7eea-4f43-b8ed-9db025e41cbf       /home   ext4    relatime    
    0       2

I.e. GRUB is on /dev/sda1 which the BIOS can see, the BIOS is too old to 
recognise the NVME 
drive.


> I assume you're getting a linux shell right after "Dropping to a
> shell!". In the shell do "lsmod" or "cat /proc/modules" and see if the
> expected nvme modules are loaded. Look at dmesg for anything strange.
> Most initrds don't have a decent way to scroll lots of text, so you
> might try to save dmesg and module listing to a USB stick (if that
> shows up).
> 
> You might try rebooting into a usb live linux distro and verify that
> the drive doesn't show up and then debug from that environment which
> will have a lot more tools available.
> 
The thing is that this all worked perfectly in several previous versions of 
[x]ubuntu, 
back to before version 20.04, it's only on upgrading to 22.04 that I have this 
problem.

-- 
Chris Green