Error messages during boot

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Dell Optiplex 5060, Mint 20.3.  Last couple of weeks seeing multiple lines of text on black screen during boot.  IIRC not previously seen.  These screens flash by much too fast to read the text, but I think I’ve seen the word “error” in there.

Today this machine apparently shut itself down while on “suspend”- failed to wake using normal manner, no lights on case, pressing power button did nothing.  Unplugged/replugged power cable, then saw black screen with options including “press F1 to reboot” which produced a very slow but familiar boot sequence with incorrect date/time, eventually self-corrected.

Seems like I need to see those apparent error messages during boot. Dell service doc names F2 on startup to enter a long list of BIOS options, might show these messages, but does not tell me how to exit this setup menu and proceed on boot sequence.  Might be Esc, not sure.  Fallback position would be to try taking  photos during boot, tough to time just right.

 

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Power surge? Power outage? Even if for just a fraction of a second, could cause a shutdown. During a very brief power outage, not all computers will shutdown. We’ve had flickers before that caused an iMAC to shutdown, but other flickers that didn’t.

I had an Optiplex 9010 once that I had to turn on and off a few times with the power button before it would boot after an outage,(it was running Windows 7). I’ve had surge protector power strips that needed to be cycled on and off a couple times after a power outage.

You can check the Logs (Start Menu —> Logs) and see what’s reported (the messages can be fairly obtuse, sometimes)

It’s not uncommon for me to see some messages on the black screen. I don’t pay much attention to them since my Mint machines run fine. I sometimes see an error message in the Logs on a couple machines having to do with not being able to access Bluetooth, but that’s because I have Bluetooth disabled.

FWIW, I’ve found suspend/hibernate/sleep/etc. modes to be kind of fussy. I usually keep my computers either on or off. When “on” a screensaver kicks in after 10 minutes.

Sort of a mishmash of things but might give you some places to start.

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Slowpoke47

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incorrect date/time, eventually self-corrected

Time to change CMOS battery?

Never Say Never

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CADesertRat, Slowpoke47, DrBonzo

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My question exactly.
Time and date off on boot => CMOS battery.
I’ve had to go through the BIOS setup and set them to get PCs to boot.

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Slowpoke47, DrBonzo

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DrBonzo wrote:

FWIW, I’ve found suspend/hibernate/sleep/etc. modes to be kind of fussy. I usually keep my computers either on or off. When “on” a screensaver kicks in after 10 minutes.

Not the first time I’ve seen this observation- but we have always used sleep/suspend function in Windows and Mint on our computers over the years w/o issues. Seems worthwhile to stop the HDD when not in use to aid life expectancy of those tiny bearings in there.

cyberSAR wrote:

Time to change CMOS battery?

PKCano wrote:

My question exactly. Time and date off on boot => CMOS battery.

Seems reasonable to assume the CMOS battery is weak and replace it- the Dell docs lead you by the nose to do that.

DrBonzo wrote:

You can check the Logs (Start Menu —> Logs) and see what’s reported (the messages can be fairly obtuse, sometimes)

Yeah, a LOT of events etc listed there- on first glance, nothing pertaining to my original question, mostly bootups and shutdowns.  Would still like to read those lines of text displayed during boot, mentioned above.  Could they relate to the CMOS battery?  They began to appear just a few days ago, might be added to since then.  The F2 selection on bootup has a menu for altering the BIOS, snuck in and snuck out w/o actually doing anything, but again didn’t see anything related to those lines of text previously mentioned.

Anyone know how to read them?

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Depending upon where in the boot process the messages occur you may be able to capture one screen image (showing the lines of text) using the PrtScn key. This key will perform a screen capture before the login screen appears. After boot the image will be available to open in clipboard.

For many PCs:

If the BIOS collects these messages, then it might be in a capture of the BIOS settings.
To get a capture of the BIOS settings:
Enter the BIOS during boot up. Plug a USB flash drive into the PC. The USB flash drive must be formatted in FAT32 and best if empty so it won’t overwrite data already there. Press F12 and the BIOS settings will be captured to the USB flash drive. The error messages may or may not be included with the captured settings.

HTH, Dana:))

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Slowpoke47, DrBonzo

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Seems worthwhile to pursue this.  On this keyboard, the Print Screen key is paired with Insert, the latter on top in white letters and the former below, blue letters.  Never had need for either.  I think Print Screen requires the fn key, also in blue, and might not be enabled by default.

From systranbox.com:  In Linux Mint, the print screen function is not enabled by default. In order to enable it, you will need to go into the “System Settings”. From there, select “Keyboard” and then go to the “Shortcuts” tab. Under “System Settings”, select “Print Screen” and then press the “Enable” button.

In this system, I don’t see a menu item called “System Settings” or suchlike, might be via F2 on bootup.

And, shouldn’t the contents of the clipboard in this case be saveable to a doc or elsewhere, bypassing an external medium?

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In Cinnamon, System Settings is in a couple places: Start button, then look straight up and there is the System Settings icon. Or, Start button, then scroll on the right down to System Preferences.

Alternatively, Start button, then Preferences and scroll down to Keyboard, and continue with the instructions you quoted above. The second “System Settings” referred to is in the left pane of the Shortcuts tab after getting the Keyboard screen.

Hopefully things will be similar in Mate(? IIRC)

One other thought. Have you installed a kernel recently? I installed 5.4.0-136 a few days ago. I haven’t noticed any problems but that might cause something like what you’ve experienced.

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Slowpoke47

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Found many options using Preferences>Keyboard- will look more closely at that later.

DrBonzo wrote:

One other thought. Have you installed a kernel recently? I installed 5.4.0-136 a few days ago.

Current kernel per Update Mgr is 5.4.136.153, called out as linux-libc-dev, offered and accepted 1/6/23.

Checked today to confirm- when in Suspend mode, time/date stops advancing until awakened.  As mentioned, we have always used Suspend (in Windows, Sleep), disk & fan stop, etc, never had an issue there.

 

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DrBonzo

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The print screen function during the boot process comes from the keyboard loading from BIOS before the OS (Mint) boots up; thus, is not controlled by Mint. Once the OS has booted up you can paste the capture into any app that will accept an image.

Capturing the Settings in BIOS is different from the Print screen while booting. While you are in the BIOS you can use the F12 key to screen capture screens in the BIOS. These captures are immediately sent to a disk that is FAT32 formatted (the USB flash drive). These capture images of the BIOS can be accessed from the flash drive after booting up.

Look thru the BIOS menu as most BIOS have Save changes and exit AND exit without saving changes.

HTH, Dana:))

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DrBonzo, Slowpoke47

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hmmm.. I’m not convinced that the CMOS battery is at fault here,
why? if connected online all the time the device would update the time by default in LM so difficult to determine. (I have that switched off in LM for that very reason)

Might be an idea to see if the time drifts overnight whilst the device is off (no power) and check the next day whilst disconnected from the internet to determine the CMOS battery health.

Keeping IT Lean, Clean and Mean!

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Slowpoke47, DrBonzo

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Microfix wrote:

Might be an idea to see if the time drifts overnight whilst the device is off (no power) and check the next day whilst disconnected from the internet to determine the CMOS battery health.

On this machine, the correct time/date displays on bootup, no correction visible in the tray.  While shut down, say, overnight, there is still power to the computer, no indicator lights, of course, and Internet connection remains. Whether time/date or anything else remains current with the machine off I do not know.

If necessary, I can test that CMOS battery to rule it in or out.  Just a couple of latches on the case, not even a screwdriver needed.

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DrBonzo

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Re Print Screen/Clipboard- Faced with diverging opinions here and elsewhere, went with stone-age tactic, photos of screen.  Same text appears twice during boot sequence.  No idea what it means.

This machine is Dell refurbished; official reply is CMOS battery is not replaced during refurb.  Unknown whether a possibly weak battery might be at the bottom of this issue, but not hard to test/replace.

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DrBonzo

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Don’t know what it means either. These might help:

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=358981

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=368449

A quick skim suggests to me that it’s likely not an issue and that pursuing it will lead down a rabbit hole.

I’d check the battery. Simple, quick, and cheap (all relative, of course)

If the hibernate behavior becomes a real issue/problem, leave your machine on. FWIW my daily driver is a Dell with an HDD, almost 7 years old and is on 24/7 (NOT sleep/hibernate, etc., but On)

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Slowpoke47

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On our last desktop, also Dell, both the fan and power supply winked out after a few years.

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FWIW = 0 in this case. 🙁

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According to your screenshot, the first thing listed is SGX disabled by BIOS. If you google that, it shows that SGX= Intel Software Guard Extensions. There are many post’s from all different brands of computers with that problem such as this one https://techlibrary.hpe.com/docs/iss/proliant_uefi/UEFI_Edgeline_103117/GUID-5B0A4E24-26B7-46CC-8A12-5C403A14B466.html

Don’t know if that’s your complete problem but it’s a place to start if the cmos batt. isn’t at fault. Hope this helps.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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Slowpoke47, DrBonzo

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Slowpoke47 wrote:

Current kernel per Update Mgr is 5.4.136.153, called out as linux-libc-dev, offered and accepted 1/6/23.

@Slowpoke47, a couple of weeks ago I upgraded my Kubuntu system from 20.04 LTS to 22.04 LTS, and ever since then I, too, have noticed a barrage of messages about supposed errors running past me as Kubuntu boots up.

At first, these messages were alarming, but since everything seems to be working just fine, I’ve been inclined to ignore the supposed errors. I’m wondering if, during the OS upgrade, some boot-time setting got changed by the developers to start displaying all this stuff that, for all I know, has been going on all along, but only in the background where it never bothered me.

Maybe you’re experiencing a similar situation.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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Slowpoke47, DrBonzo

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As I suspected before your screenshots, not a battery issue….
The SGX report is related to intel ‘Software Guard Extension’ at BIOS level, which is ignored in the LM kernels modules and this is only a screen report not an error.

To overcome the annoyance, see this LM Forum Thread and pay particular attention to the second post on how to make the report disappear, or just leave it as is, your choice, it’s just info anyway.

Self parity check: Take your time and watch out for your well known typos before committing.

Keeping IT Lean, Clean and Mean!

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Cybertooth, Slowpoke47, DrBonzo

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Good to know that the system is not alerting me that it’s about to dissolve into a smoking pile or suchlike.

In order to read this text, I had to carefully time a photograph, as the text appears very briefly.  Couldn’t tell that it is the same repetitive line.  Even if I enable the Print Screen function, the boot process may or may not be far enough along to activate it.  Going forward, is there a means to freeze something like this in order to read it?  Perhaps next time the info will be more consequential.

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I usually start recording a video on my phone before the error comes up so that I can pause the video to see what it says. Works for me anyway.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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SueW, Cybertooth

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I’m one of the 3% of troglodytes sans smartphone (yeah, I know, big eyeroll) due to the intrusive nature of either service provider, tracking and recording every move a user makes- an unacceptable tradeoff.  Amazingly enough, I’m managing to blunder through life without one.  But my digital camera will record a video- that was an option I didn’t think to try.

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DrBonzo

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Slowpoke47 wrote:

Going forward, is there a means to freeze something like this in order to read it?

The link below explains how to create logs of the boot process to view the error messages in a log.

How to Determine and Fix Boot Issues in Linux

Scroll to the section labeled:

How to Find Out Linux Boot Issues or Error Messages

HTH, Dana:))

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