Hello, I was writing on my Librem the other day and I guess the adapter was plugged but maybe the power strip was not turned on.
So the PC just shut off. No warning.
When I tried to plug it back and turn it back on, it would not boot up.
I got a few different options to boot from the bootloader menu.
None of them worked. I tried two recovery modes that did not work.
I noticed a firmware failed to load message once or twice before it quickly disappeared.
I asked claude for some ideas. It suggested to try editing the boot parameters. No luck.
Right now, I cannot even see the recovery mode options that I had seen before.
I am wondering if anyone has encountered this? Any ideas on how to get this back up and running. I have some work on the machine that I was not able to save and really need it back.
which you can always safely ignore. (The message was always there, long before whatever has happened now did happen.)
If that is the case then maybe best not to boot up but instead just to let the battery charge fully before booting.
In addition to clarifying which boot firmware you are using (Pureboot and if Pureboot whether Basic or Regular / SeaBIOS), what distro are you using?
As a highly generic piece of advice, with a computer than won’t boot but the computer has important files on the disk, you can always remove the internal disk, put it in an enclosure, and copy the content from another computer. That comes with its own challenges of course.
Another option is to do a Live Boot. That will confirm that the computer is basically still working and is another way of copying off content that you need. That assumes that you have a suitable Live Boot USB flash drive before you suddenly need it. This is less disruptive and less technically challenging than using an enclosure.
Some general troubleshooting once it fails to boot:
can you ping it?
if you have an SSH server installed and enabled on the computer, can you SSH in?
My goodness! The kernel seems to have gone out of its way to make the error message worse. You may note from the previous link that I suggested 3 years ago that Purism find a way to suppress that message as it is unhelpful and misleading.
For information: as @irvinewade mentioned, I confirm that this message is not a problem. More specifically, it has to do with a binary blob used for the i915 iGPU (on-die Intel GPU) that is non-free and not necessary for the iGPU to function.
But we still don’t know the specific firmware you are using, and this could help better diagnose your problem. For example: do you remember if your laptop was shipped with a Librem Key bundled - which would indicate PureBoot firmware - and if you had maybe reverted to flash SeaBIOS firmware (which is an entirely different boot firmware)
To be clear … @TiX0 was asking about the boot firmware i.e. the firmware that runs on the main CPU before anything is loaded from disk. That is unrelated to the error message that happens to be coming up.
PS As to the actual problem … There is an outside chance that pressing Ctrl+Alt+Fn where n might be, say, 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 etc. will achieve something i.e. if the computer basically booted normally but the GUI failed to start, in which case that key sequence can bring up a login prompt. From that login prompt, you can login “old school” and investigate and fix the problem.
I was SUPER new to PureOS and linux. When I ordered it, everything was loaded on to the machine such that I just had to do a few steps in order to use the pc.
When I was seeing the advanced boot options
It said at the top of the screen:
GNU version 2.06 -3pureos1u1~deb11u5
And offered few boot up options in a blue screen. Non of which would complete but here are the options that were given:
Unfortunately, I still cannot determine which firmware you are using from the given information.
But if you are presented with boot options for a target system (PureOS in this case), we can assume that if the firmware got to that point, it is then ok. No need to reflash anything at this point.
My opinion from here, is that your boot partition (containing the PureOS kernel) may have been damaged with the sudden power loss, preventing it to boot any kernel options offered.
The best way to proceed IMO is to download the PureOS 11 (Crimson) iso file and image it on a USB stick to make a LiveUSB to boot from; in order to try to repair the damaged boot partition (or at least maybe open the root filesystem to salvage the files you need) - but you’ll need another laptop or PC in order to download and image the liveUSB stick.
You can find the iso image of PureOS 11 at Download PureOS and below it are instructions how to image the iso file to a USB stick (this makes it an external LiveUSB to boot from and repair the internal disk’s partitions or access them to salvage data)
Once you have your LiveUSB ready: this is where we need to know what firmware you have, because booting the external USB stick is different: I know how to do it from PureBoot (coreboot/Heads firmware stack) but I am not familiar with SeaBIOS and I think it looks like this is the firmware you have. But someone else would likely be able to help you with booting the USB stick from SeaBIOS payload.
Unfortunately. i am offline for the next week. But think I will try this when I am back.
what is interesting now, is that i think there could be an issue with the original charger that I received with the PC.
Whereas, when this first happened, i could select and try the different boot options, now those options flash for a second and then the screen goes dark. I am now wondering if part of the puzzle all along has been the charger going bad?
In any case, my next steps are:
see if I can find an equivalent charger that I am certain is working.
Charge the laptop for a long time
Try the boot options once more
If none of the offered boot options work, try to boot from a USB like you recommend.