I seem to have borked my Librem Mini (version 1) and can’t boot into PureOS.
Trying some command lines. Update, upgrade, fine, no problems.
Tried deleting orphaned packages using the command line. One package found was ‘crypto’-something. This prompted a warning splash screen. I realized my error and tabbed to ‘No’ to abort but terminal carried on with message about deleting something ‘anyway’ (!) (I have screenshots of these terminal messages… on the drive I can no longer access)
I then searched for missing dependencies, updated again, all seemed well. But after trying to reboot I cannot get to the login screen. When I try to boot I see a slow PureOS boot splash loader progress bar, and then the following error message.
[1.312656 i915 000:00:02.0: firmware: failed to load i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin (-2)
Looked through the forums for similar problems, and took the step of updating the BIOS.
The cursor winking in and out of the void after (initramfs) has me re-evaluating my life choices.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
UPDATE: tried booting into ‘recovery mode’ with the latest kernel and that fails as well with the message:
ALERT! UUID = {long string} does not exist.
Ignore the error. I would say that it is not the problem.
I think Purism would do themselves a great favour if they could get this error message completely suppressed - as it is an indication of success not failure.
What I would do is remove the drive, put it in an enclosure, and mount it on another computer.
Then you can
a) get those screenshots, and
b) more importantly possibly fix up whatever has happened, or
c) save your personal files in preparation for blowing it away and installing again from scratch.
An alternative line of investigation would be to live boot the operating system from a USB flash drive.
For sure it’s entirely up to Purism. However a search of this forum reveals an alarming number of hits for an error message that is actually a success message.
The other thing that bugs me is that evidently this message happens to be the last message that is output before the computer goes off into la la land. So it is getting blamed, rightly or wrongly (very likely, wrongly). Maybe Purism could add a message rather than suppressing a message, if that is easier. The added message could be an instruction to ignore the previous “success” message. (Another added message could also say what the last thing done was if there is something that is a recurring problem.)
By way of example, every time I upgrade samba I get a specific and consistent error message about something or other (the text escapes me for the moment) but the upgrade then tells me to ignore the previous error message. Just helps with user peace of mind, helps to reduce support calls, …
Any hints for the OP regarding what the problem is rather than what it isn’t?
Or what the OP should do to recover from this situation?
Thanks for the replies. I don’t believe there was a way for me to ignore the error I was seeing. The drive simply wouldn’t boot after I had mistakenly deleted an important package(s) or parts thereof.
Just to follow-up/mark this as resolved: I contacted support and was advised to boot from a live USB and this allowed me to retrieve any files I wanted to save from the /home directory before reinstalling the OS, which was relatively quick and easy. (I have yet to get Balena to successfully write an ISO to any USB drive I own, however.)
Among the files I recovered were screenshots of the commands I typed in the terminal, pre-borking. I will share these with support but refrain from posting them here as they resulted in the bad thing happening.
Clearly I need to spend more time understanding the command line or staying away from it entirely.
To that end, for the reinstall of PureOS I chose the KDE-Plasma version and have been fairly happy with it. Booting/loading takes longer but once logged in it’s just as snappy as GNOME. I miss the simplicity of some GNOME apps but for the most part prefer being able to more easy tweak the UI to fit my uses.
