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[RESOLVED] Cannot boot liquorix kernel w/ Ubuntu 20.04 on Dell XPS 13
delete000
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Joined: 26 Dec 2021
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How can I force my system to boot the liquorix kernel? I have a new Dell XPS 13 with a UEFI bootloader. Ubuntu 20.04 came preinstalled. Kernel and headers installed just fine and are in the /boot folder. The liquorix kernel is a newer version (5.15) than the stock kernel (5.11).

< Edited by delete000 :: Dec 31, 21, 14:08 >

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damentz
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For the most part, on Ubuntu, Liquorix will get selected automatically since it's newer. If it's not, you'll have to configure your bootloader to autoselect or give you a menu so you can choose at boot time.

If you're using grub, you can find pretty much everything you need here: wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB/Tips_and_tricks
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techAdmin
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This question doesn't seem to have anything to do with Liquorix, it's more a general 'how do I learn to use UEFI booloaders with new kernels?'. My solution to uefi, which does exactly zero that interests me, is to run it in legacy mode, which then makes everything work as it used to do before the uefi mess was created. Not all uefi/bios support legacy mode, so I try to make sure I buy equipment that does support switching, otherwise it's just headaches.
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damentz
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I use UEFI on all my systems except my desktop, and on the systems using UEFI, use GRUB. It pretty much works the same as legacy boot, with the only downside that you need to reinstall the bootloader when you swap drives so the EFI of the system gets a new entry to find it on the new drive.

Regarding OP, their problem is completely solvable but I don't really have anything to go off of. If it's GRUB though (completely likely), the multitude of solutions are in the Arch Wiki link, but it's up to OP to implement on their system. There's nothing I can really do since any code I might add to prefer Liquorix on a system it's installed on will probably come across as invasive and/or illegal, depending on the nature of change.
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delete000
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Thanks for the responses. As suggested, my problem is with UEFI, though arguably that affects my (non-)usage of the Liquorix kernel, so help is appreciated. I have updated grub entries like I used to but no dice: the UEFI bootloader seems to just ignore whatever I do.

This legacy mode sounds like a potential answer. How do I enable it (if possible on my hardware)?

EDIT :: On the other hand, automatic firmware updates sound like a good thing, and this answer suggests I<ll be giving it up if I go back to grub. Is there really no way I can force UEFI to boot a particular kernel?
https://askubuntu.com/a/1129485
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techAdmin
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This isn't a liquorix issue, the firmware upgrades, which in my opinion you'd be insane to do automatically, aren't relevant, you can use uefi in legacy mode and it works the same as bios did, that's what I do on all my machines.

The way to upgrade your bios is largely just a function of how the bios or uefi handled updating, I do it by downloading the latest bios version I want to install after reading up on them to make sure you don't have to do certain things when upgrading, which on my board you did have to do, had to update to an intermediate bios first before upgrading to the current one, which is another reason to never do that stuff automatically unless your goal is to end up with a bricked board, and also of course to never do it in X or inside the operating system since anything that crashes will brick your bios / uefi unless you have dual mode with restore from backup option. Note I"m using the term bios interchangeably with uefi running in legacy mode because except for the shinier bloated interface of the uefi stuff, I can't see any meaningful differences in terms of what I use my computer for, as long as I run uefi in legacy mode.

However, your questions are more along the lines of how do I operate a computer than about liquorix, there's pretty much zero specific about liquorix that has anything to do with updating uefi, running uefi in legacy mode, which restores the easy to use no headache bios type upgrade and kernel install.

In most uefi that support it, there is an option to run it in 'legacy mode', whatever your board calls it, that's the rough thing.

From what I can see the only problem that uefi solved was that bios had too small of an attack surface, so they introduced uefi to attempt to significantly expand the attack surface by running something that looks and acts very much like a small operating system under the covers, and why I need that I have never once understood or seen any reason or benefit from, so I don't use it. Plus having ot maintain a fat32 boot partition always struck me as a silly extra step, I build my systems with it in place in case I ever accidentally buy a board without legacy uefi mode, but I don't use it.

If you do use uefi, do make sure to disable all the junk it does, in particular, it's networking, which is one of the most glaring attack vectors I've ever come across, but luckily the boards usually let you disable that useless feature. Though I have to be honest, once I enable legacy mode, I really don't know what the differences are, the bios is still bloated, ugly, with an ugly interface, whether they call it uefi or not, with security features I don't want or need, designed mostly to help the windows or apple corporations make it harder to install other operating systems on their hardware.

So anyway, the rest is just googling and researching, as a rule, I'd recommend against taking what the ubuntu forums say as the truth or correct, that's not a place I look for the best answers as a rule, unless it's about ubuntu specific issues.
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delete000
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:: techAdmin wrote ::
So anyway, the rest is just googling and researching


My hardware doesn't support legacy mode UEFI. Is it possible to still use a Liquorix kernel in this case? If so, could you recommend what I should be googling / researching to make it work?

The link to the Arch Linux wiki above seems to be an OS installation procedure. My system is up and running, I just want to boot a specific kernel with as few changes as possible.
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damentz
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There's a few things you can change, maybe start with changing the lines in /etc/default/grub:

:: Code ::
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=y
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu


If those options exist, change them to the value I have listed. If they don't exist, add them.

Then run: sudo update-grub, or sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

This is assuming you're using GRUB. If you're not then you need to look up documentation for your bootloader.
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delete000
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Thanks. That indeed gives me a GRUB boot menu, but the liquorix kernels are not listed, even though they are installed (following instructions on the liquorix website). OTOH, I have successfully installed the lowlatency kernel from the Ubuntu repository, and that shows up just fine. Just in case this is relevant, I have also compiled and installed a RT_PREEMPT kernel, which is also in /boot but not added to grub.cfg when I run sudo grub-mkconfig.
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delete000
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Joined: 26 Dec 2021
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By the way, here's what happens upon installation:

:: Code ::

sudo apt-get install linux-image-liquorix-amd64 linux-headers-liquorix-amd64
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 linux-image-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64
Suggested packages:
  linux-doc-5.15
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 linux-headers-liquorix-amd64
  linux-image-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 linux-image-liquorix-amd64
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 75.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 422 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Get:1 http://ppa.launchpad.net/damentz/liquorix/ubuntu focal/main amd64 linux-headers-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 amd64 5.15-15ubuntu1~focal [11.8 MB]
Get:2 http://ppa.launchpad.net/damentz/liquorix/ubuntu focal/main amd64 linux-image-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 amd64 5.15-15ubuntu1~focal [63.6 MB]
Get:3 http://ppa.launchpad.net/damentz/liquorix/ubuntu focal/main amd64 linux-headers-liquorix-amd64 amd64 5.15-15ubuntu1~focal [167 kB]
Get:4 http://ppa.launchpad.net/damentz/liquorix/ubuntu focal/main amd64 linux-image-liquorix-amd64 amd64 5.15-15ubuntu1~focal [167 kB]
Fetched 75.7 MB in 13s (5,898 kB/s)                                                                           
Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64.
(Reading database ... 680334 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../linux-headers-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64_5.15-15ubuntu1~focal_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking linux-headers-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 (5.15-15ubuntu1~focal) ...
Selecting previously unselected package linux-image-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64.
Preparing to unpack .../linux-image-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64_5.15-15ubuntu1~focal_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking linux-image-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 (5.15-15ubuntu1~focal) ...
Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-liquorix-amd64.
Preparing to unpack .../linux-headers-liquorix-amd64_5.15-15ubuntu1~focal_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking linux-headers-liquorix-amd64 (5.15-15ubuntu1~focal) ...
Selecting previously unselected package linux-image-liquorix-amd64.
Preparing to unpack .../linux-image-liquorix-amd64_5.15-15ubuntu1~focal_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking linux-image-liquorix-amd64 (5.15-15ubuntu1~focal) ...
Setting up linux-headers-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 (5.15-15ubuntu1~focal) ...
/etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms:
 * dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64
   ...done.
Setting up linux-image-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64 (5.15-15ubuntu1~focal) ...
I: /boot/vmlinuz.old is now a symlink to vmlinuz-5.13.0-22-lowlatency
I: /boot/initrd.img.old is now a symlink to initrd.img-5.13.0-22-lowlatency
I: /boot/vmlinuz is now a symlink to vmlinuz-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64
I: /boot/initrd.img is now a symlink to initrd.img-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms:
 * dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64
   ...done.
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-12.2-liquorix-amd64
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-grub:
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub'
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub.d/init-select.cfg'
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub.d/oem-flavour.cfg'
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.13.0-22-lowlatency
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-5.13.0-22-lowlatency
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings
done
Setting up linux-headers-liquorix-amd64 (5.15-15ubuntu1~focal) ...
Setting up linux-image-liquorix-amd64 (5.15-15ubuntu1~focal) ...

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