Ubuntu – Can’t boot using 5.3.0 kernel after upgrading to 19.10

19.10bootgrub2kernelupgrade

If I try to boot normally, it just hangs on the purple screen and doesn't get to asking me for my disk encryption password.

If I go to "Advanced Ubuntu Options" (or whatever it's called) in GRUB, and try to boot with the 5.3 kernel I see the error

[   0.794343] [drm:drm_calc_timestamping_constants [drm]] *ERROR* rtc 66: Can't calculate constants, dotclock = 0!

the error number seems to change every time, but the error message is the same.

If I boot 5.3.0 in recovery mode, it seems to boot to the read only filesystem just fine, but when I ask it to continue the boot process it hangs with just a blinking underscore right away.

I can use my system just fine if I chose to boot it with the old 5.0.0-32-generic kernel through GRUB (I'm typing this bug report on "Ubuntu 5.0.0-32.34-generic 5.0.21").

During the upgrade I got an error that it couldn't start sshd because it was already running on port 22.

I've tried reinstalling the latest kernel with sudo apt install --reinstall linux-generic but that didn't help.

Best Answer

I've just updated to 19.10 and had similar issue. It didn't started successfully after the automatical revoot triggered by the system update.

I restarted, chose advanced options in grub and continued with the previous kernel version (was something like 5.0.0....) When it started I run:

sudo apt-get upgrade

It failed and asked me to run:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

manually, because of unfinished configuration.

That is what I have done and after:

sudo apt-get upgrade

finished successfully I was able to restart normally.

Hope this can help somebody else who faces the same problem.

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